


A Brother is Born For Adversity

by morwen_of_gondor



Series: The Kingston Shatterpoint [6]
Category: Captain Horatio Hornblower R.N., Hornblower (TV), Hornblower - C. S. Forester
Genre: Action & Romance, Action/Adventure, Archie Kennedy Is a Ray of Sunshine, Book 6: The Happy Return, Brotherhood, But he's trying, Captain Horatio Hornblower R.N. - Freeform, F/M, Gen, Human Disaster Horatio Hornblower, Injury, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Napoleonic Wars, Naval Tactics, Period Typical Attitudes, The Royal Navy, William Bush is a Good Friend, aka the movie, and a saint, and which I have taken some cues from, which is underappreciated
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-03
Updated: 2021-03-15
Packaged: 2021-03-15 23:49:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 25,204
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29816280
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morwen_of_gondor/pseuds/morwen_of_gondor
Summary: On detached service in the Pacific, the officers and captain of HMSLydiaface battle, diplomacy...and the unique challenge of a lady on board a ship of war.
Relationships: Horatio Hornblower/Barbara Wellesley, William Bush & Horatio Hornblower & Archie Kennedy
Series: The Kingston Shatterpoint [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2032912
Comments: 32
Kudos: 10





	1. Landfall

**Author's Note:**

> It's here! The long-promised rewrite of _Beat to Quarters_ has begun.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After a seven-month voyage, the strain is beginning to tell on the officers and men of the _Lydia._ And what they find at the end of that voyage brings its own challenges.

There came a sharp knock at the door of Hornblower's cabin. "Enter," he called, mind still mostly occupied with the calculations from the previous night's lunar observation.

"Captain Hornblower," came the clipped voice of his second lieutenant, "may I have a word?"

Horatio set down his pen and turned around to face Archie, a little confused by the formality of the address. Usually Archie only used his title either in public or when teasing him, but he did not seem to be teasing now. "Certainly, Mr. Kennedy," he said, trying to put a little levity into his voice, and, he thought, failing.

"I believe that an apology is in order from me, sir," Archie continued, standing at perfect attention and staring into space at a point over Horatio's left shoulder.

"An apology? Archie, what on earth do you think you've done?"

"An apology for excessive informality, sir," Archie said, not, as he usually would, following Horatio's lead and addressing him by his first name.

Horatio spluttered for a moment in confusion before reining himself back in. "And what makes you think that such an apology is necessary, Mr. Kennedy?"

"The unequal standards I have noticed applied to the officers of this ship, Captain Hornblower. I am permitted informalities that Mr. Bush is not. I am, in fact, permitted to make casual conversation with you on deck. It is, in my opinion sir, a kindness which you extend to me based upon our long friendship. I am grateful for it. However, sir, it is not conducive to harmony in the wardroom for the officers to be treated unequally. I therefore apologise for my inappropriate conduct and shall endeavour not to engage further in it. May I be dismissed, sir?"

He turned to meet Horatio's eyes, and Horatio saw for the first time the tight lines of his face and the fire smouldering in his blue eyes. Archie was angry. At him. And he was not entirely sure why.

"No, Mr. Kennedy, you may not. We have engaged in this informality previously, even when serving together, and neither you nor anyone else has objected to it. Why has your conscience been pricked so keenly now?"

"It is not the informality, sir. It is the distribution of the informality."

"Explain, please."

"Very well, sir. Why is it that when my attempts at conversation meet with an answering attempt, or at the least some form of polite acknowledgement, Lieutenant Bush's are consistently rebuffed, and rudely? He is my senior officer and the other members of the wardroom are beginning to suspect that I am the captain's favourite, and that for other reasons than my seamanship. This is not a state of affairs that I wish to continue, sir. It is one of the greatest honours of my life to serve under you, Captain Hornblower, and I do not wish to jeopardise the discipline on board your ship by taking advantage of our long friendship."

 _Oh._ Horatio did a quick mental review of his behaviour over the course of this voyage, and found himself noticing things in his memories that he had not noticed in the instant. Cutting words, born from the constant strain of following impossible Admiralty orders, directed to the nearest target, but nearly always the same nearest target. Quiet flashes of hurt, followed by unhappy resignation, in a pair of honest blue eyes that had never looked at him with anything other than admiration and friendship before. Whispers among the junior officers. Gerard giving odd looks to Ar...Kennedy, better call him Kennedy, as he descended from the quarterdeck to the wardroom after a _sotto voce_ conversation with the captain.

"Mr. Kennedy, was this a long and round-about way of telling me that _I_ ought to be apologising to Mr. Bush?"

"I would never dream of making such a suggestion, Captain Hornblower."

"Very well, point taken, Mr. Kennedy," Horatio said wearily. "Dismissed."

"Do you accept my apology, sir?"

"No, I do not." _Because it was never your apology to make._ "Dismissed, Mr. Kennedy."

Scowling, Horatio turned back to the lunar observations. He had allowed his own feelings, both of friendship and of worry over the Admiralty's orders, to blind him to a dangerous trend in the wardroom. He would take thought for how to remedy it. If Archie...no, dammit, Kennedy, had felt obligated to risk his Captain's wrath by openly broaching the subject, even obliquely, things must be nearing a dangerous pass. 

The lunar observations verified what the chronometers said, he found, and their message was an encouraging one; they were nearing land, and would most probably reach it within a week. Mathematics had always come easily to him. You added such a value to correct for height above sea level. You took the sine of such a value and the cosine of another. You might apply the same formula to the same numbers, and you would always come out with the same answer. The delicate balance of interpersonal dynamics on board a ship was a very different matter. You could not always apply the same formula and trust it to achieve the same result. Only observation and experimentation would serve, and clearly he had failed in both on this voyage, caught up in abstraction as he had so often been. That the abstraction was perhaps justifiable did not occur to him. A captain could not afford such mistakes, understandable or not. He was aimlessly tapping the chart with his protractor, he found, and set it down with an abrupt _clack_ on the table. Also unlike problems in mathematics, problems with men did not stay precisely where you left them for hours on end. Bush was on watch now, unless he was mistaken. It was time to begin mending what he had apparently broken.

Bush scanned the horizon for the hundredth time that day, looking for any sign of even the smallest cat's-paw of wind ruffling the calm surface of the Pacific. Just like the previous ninety-nine times, he saw nothing, and snapped his telescope shut with an internal sigh. They knew there was land to the east, probably within a couple of days' towing, but Hornblower was even more snappish than usual when anyone mentioned that. Not that Bush blamed him for his short temper; a restless crew after seven months at sea and dwindling supplies would be enough to put any captain on edge, and Bush suspected that there was something in the Admiralty's orders, which Hornblower so insistently kept secret, which was adding to his strain. Besides that, Hornblower had been a different man after he returned from the Continent, bound on a mission whose purpose nobody could guess, but about which there were strange whispers. Bush might miss the old intimacy that had been between him and Hornblower and Kennedy, but he knew quite well that captains who allowed too much familiarity with their men could be just as dangerous to discipline as captains who were too strict, if not more so. 

When Hornblower appeared on the companionway, his usual scowl firmly in place, Bush stiffened his spine and waited for the hammer to fall. But the scowl was directed at the horizon, not him. Bush silently proffered his telescope. Hornblower shook his head. "No, thank you, Mr. Bush. Any change?"

He meant in the weather. "No, sir."

"Just like the last week," Hornblower said wryly. 

Bush started a little. Casual conversation with Hornblower beyond the state of the weather had been a thing of the past on this voyage, ever since he had opened the secret orders, and since they rounded the Horn Bush had been fortunate to even be allowed that. "Aye, sir."

"Then I daresay the deck can spare you for a few minutes."

"Aye, sir. Mr. Gerard?"

"I have the watch, sir."

Bush followed his captain down the companionway and sternly forced down his apprehension that this was some rebuke more detailed than the short rebuffs he had been receiving regularly of late. If it was, he would take it with the decorum expected of a lieutenant in his Majesty's navy. Better that undeserved rebukes fall on him than on the rest of the ship.

Hornblower was speaking, he realised. "Lunar observations put our position here, Mr. Bush," he was saying, indicating a point on the charts spread over his desk. 

_What?_ Bush hurriedly followed his captain's pointing finger to a place near...Nicaragua, he read slowly, sounding the unfamiliar syllables in his mind. "It agrees with the chronometer, for whatever that may be worth," Hornblower continued.

"Aye, sir."

"The Admiralty ordered me not to sight land between our departure from Portsmouth and our arrival, here." 

Hornblower indicated another spot on the map: a bay with two oddly shaped headlands on either side, marked the _Gulf of Fonseca,_ Bush saw. "Landsmen's orders, sir," he offered. _Impossible orders,_ he added in his head, but did not venture to say it aloud.

"Just so. But I intend to carry them out nevertheless. It is not quite impossible," he added with a wry smile, as though he had heard Bush's thought. "If the wind rises we are no more than a week's sail from our destination, if that."

Hornblower seemed to be expecting an answer, and Bush wondered what had changed from all the times he had offered conversation and been sharply rebuffed, and then mentally sighed and resigned himself to the peculiarities of his captain. They were much like the peculiarities of the sea, and there was no more explaining the one than the other. "Which is, sir?"

"The fortress of one Don Julian Alvarado."

"A Don, sir?"

"A Spanish rebel, Mr. Bush."

"So our cargo…" 

Bush cut himself off lest his speculation run on too eagerly, but Hornblower did not seem offended. "Is for him," the captain finished. "Which is why no word of our presence must reach the Spanish before we arrive, and why the Admiralty gave us those _landsmen's orders,_ as you so aptly put it."

"Thank you, sir."

"Very well, Mr. Bush."

"Sir." Bush took this as a dismissal and returned to his station on deck, where there was still no change. But he had Hornblower's queer behaviour to puzzle over now, and the rest of the watch felt a good deal shorter with such a mental occupation to pass the time. If his heart felt rather lighter as well, after this renewed proof of his captain's trust, he did not admit it, even to himself.

Three days later the lookout shouted "Land ho!" just after Hornblower had gone down to breakfast, after pausing to exchange a few words on the state of the ship and the weather with Bush, which had become a new part of his morning routine. He had repeated his certainty, then, that they would raise land within four days, though Archie, looking on, wondered if he was so very adamant because he was sure of his calculations, or because he needed it to be so and not otherwise. Possibly it had been a little of both, but the event had borne him out wonderfully, as events usually did with Hornblower.

Hornblower stoutly refused to interrupt his breakfast for the sighting of land, and did not appear until some ten minutes later. Archie sent Bush a quick and subtle smile when he did, walking with the slightly exaggerated slowness and disinterest with which he was accustomed to cover over his excitement, and studiously ignoring the excitement which was apparent among both officers and men. He gave vent to the mood of the moment sufficiently to ascend to the fighting top himself (not something he was in the habit of doing, since he had ceased to be a lieutenant) and remaining there for nearly a quarter of an hour with his eye glued to the telescope.

When Hornblower descended again to the quarterdeck most of the men on the ship who were not immediately occupied with some urgent business, officers not excepted, were still gathered in little knots here and there on the deck. The midshipmen had collected themselves on the lee rail, allowing to the lieutenants the use of the weather rail, just as the lieutenants ceded the weather rail to him when he wished to walk there. All eyes were turned to the captain as he set foot on the quarterdeck again, and he gave a slight, satisfied smile as he looked over the expectant faces. The man who said that Hornblower had no instinct for the dramatic might be understandably wrong, Archie thought, but he was wrong nevertheless. "I believe, gentlemen," Hornblower said, "that we have made landfall precisely where the Admiralty wishes us to be. In the Gulf of Fonseca, to be precise. In fact it is quite certain, unless the Dagoes who made the chart entirely missed a second bay of this size, and I think it unlikely."

There was a ripple of laughter around the quarterdeck, but it was quickly stifled again when Hornblower opened his mouth to continue speaking. There were politicians in the House of Commons at that very hour who would have given a year of their lives to be attended with half the eager focus that was directed towards Captain Hornblower in that moment. "Our first mission here, gentlemen, is to ally ourselves to one Don Julian Alvarado, a Spanish landowner whom the Admiralty believes can be induced to rebel against the Dons. Our cargo of small arms is, as Mr. Bush is aware, for him."

Another ripple around the quarterdeck, this one less amused. The Admiralty had been trying for some years to raise rebellion in Spain's American territories, unsuccessfully, and more than one Navy man had had his career broken over his failure to do so. The officers and men of the _Lydia_ had held a fair amount of affection for Hornblower even before this, but at the moment, having brought the his ship to a perfect landfall after seven months at sea, sighting no land but the Horn in a storm, he might well have been a demigod. The prospect of the Admiralty punishing him for failing to perform something that more practical souls had long ago put down as an impossibility rankled with them.

Hornblower evidently decided he had said enough and set his officers to work, navigating into the bay. Just after the anchor had dropped, when everyone was beginning to wonder what he might do next, a hail came down from the lookout. "Deck there! Boat putting out from shore. Two points abaft the starboard beam."

Shortly afterwards the boat hailed them in Spanish. Archie listened with interest. His Spanish was rusty, but he remembered enough to follow most of what was going on. He saw the faint surprise in Hornblower's eyes, immediately suppressed, when their curiously clad visitor declared himself to be a general in the service of "the Almighty," and the faint irritation that followed when the supposed General demanded Hornblower's immediate compliance in coming to an unknown location to meet this Almighty, formerly known as Don Julian Alvarado (with many additions of title and ancestral name). In the end Hornblower's threat of sending the General back without so much as a message persuaded him to part with the location of the house where Don Julian was to be found, and Hornblower turned back to his lieutenants. "Mr. Bush, Mr. Kennedy," he said, "I am going ashore, and I hope to return soon. If I do not, if I am not back nor have written to you by midnight, you must take steps to ensure the safety of the ship. Here is the key of my desk, Mr. Bush. You have my orders that at midnight you are to read the government's secret orders to me, and act on them as you think proper. Some of them I have told you already, but there is more information there that you will need to fully understand the situation."

"Aye aye, sir," Archie and Bush said in unison. Then, Bush, encouraged by Hornblower's recent civility, dared to ask, "Do you think — is it safe for you on shore alone, sir?"

"I don't know," Hornblower replied, looking surprisingly indifferent. "But I do not see that I have a choice. This is one mountain that I do not think will come to Muhammed, if the way this General Hernandez acts is any indication."

"Did the General really call this Don Julian _the Almighty,_ sir?" Archie asked, in his eager curiosity saving himself from addressing his captain by his Christian name only just in time.

"Ha-hm. I believe he did." Hornblower looked disapproving.

"Beg pardon, sir, but that doesn't sound precisely...normal, sir," Archie said. "Oughtn't we to send a guard with you? Or just one of us?"

"No, Mr. Kennedy," Hornblower said firmly. "I shall be going ashore alone." 

He offered no explanation. "We'll bring you off safe and sound, sir, if there's any hanky-panky," Bush said firmly, his face showing what he thought of Spaniards who went about calling themselves after divinities.

"You'll see to the safety of the ship first, Mr. Bush," Hornblower snapped, but then softened his tone at once. "Don't risk the _Lydia's_ chance of getting home for me, William, or our mission. Our orders must come above all. If we fail, the Admiralty's mission in the Pacific fails. That matters more than any one man's life."

Bush subsided, though he looked unhappy as Hornblower informed General Hernandez that he was at his service, and descended into the boat.

There followed a very anxious day aboard the _Lydia._ The hands were restless, so near to land and yet still so far, with the hope of fresh water and supplies to tantalise them, yet still for the moment forced to drink the foul water from the ship's casks and eat ancient salt pork. The officers were worried at Hornblower having gone off alone to speak to a man who seemed, by what they could judge from his emissaries at least, strange and perhaps mad. There was no question of any of them leaving the quarterdeck until their captain had returned, even those who were off watch.

Bush was worried too, which Archie could tell because he set every man on deck to work at something, whether it was work that needed doing or not. Snowy white decks were holystoned yet again, and woe to the man who shirked his work. Every piece of rigging that could be reached and repaired without making the _Lydia_ unready for battle was examined with a fine-toothed comb. Brass fittings were polished until the sun glancing off them dazzled the eyes. The water-casks were scoured and scoured again until they were nearly as white as the decks. By afternoon, anyone might have been justified in thinking that it was Sunday and the captain's inspection was about to commence.

By the time it began to grow dark, nearly everything that could be done aboard the _Lydia_ without going ashore had been done, at least once, and Bush was pacing the deck. Archie could see him following Hornblower's usual path from his perch in the foremast fighting top, where he occasionally varied his occupation of scanning the shore with a telescope (the boat that had taken Hornblower to the shore was still drawn up on the beach, which comforted him a little) by looking down at the decks below. Out of long-ingrained habit, the remaining officers were ignoring him as scrupulously as they did Hornblower on his morning walks.

It was fully dark, and the moon was rising, by the time Archie's eager telescope found that the boat was pulling out from shore again, and it was too dark for him to be sure if Hornblower were in it or not. He hailed the deck eagerly, and then descended the shrouds so quickly he nearly stripped the skin off his palms like a midshipman trying to show off. "Boat ahoy!" Bush shouted, as soon as the boat was within hail.

"Lydia!" came back the answer, in Hornblower's voice, and all at once the tension in the air vanished, as though a taut rope had been cut.

Hornblower would have been justified in making some comment when he came on deck to find all the officers, right down to the midshipmen, waiting for him anxiously, but he made none. In fact, he looked nearly as relieved to see them as they were to see him. There was a hint of tension in the lines around his eyes and the set of his jaw, and Archie wondered what had happened with this El Supremo to make his captain look like he had had an unexpected view into the surgeon's cockpit. He guessed, however, that none of them would be getting answers that night, and he guessed correctly. Hornblower shook hands with both him and Bush, the relieved look still very noticeable, but all he said, after "Ha-hm" (which Archie had expected, and which nearly made him laugh) was "Queer customers, this lot. But if they keep their word tomorrow we'll begin resupplying. There's a spring in the bay where we can refill our water casks if nothing else."

Then he disappeared down the companionway, evidently with the intent of retiring for the night. Bush and Archie exchanged raised eyebrows, which were their substitute for shrugged shoulders. There might be explanations in the morning or there might not. Either way, El Supremo had not endeared himself to the officers of the _Lydia_ by his treatment of their captain, and both of them suspected that that would not change.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments feed the muse!


	2. The Calm Before the Storm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hornblower and his lieutenants dance around their mad ally El Supremo, and receive a surprising piece of news. And a very surprising passenger.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was really not expecting so much of this story to be told from Archie's perspective, but he's being a chatty POV character right now and I'm not complaining, especially as he so often brings a fresh perspective to things that we've only ever seen through Hornblower's eyes. Hope y'all enjoy!

Whatever else might be true of El Supremo — and Archie wondered very much why Horatio had so strictly enjoined up on the men that they not stray beyond the beach while ashore, that restriction not being a wholly usual one — his people were at least true to their word when it came to providing the _Lydia_ with supplies. For two days boats plied back and forth between the ship and the shore, bringing meat and bread and salt and rum and tobacco (the appearance of the latter two was regarded as nothing less than miraculous by the men), and carrying away powder and shot and small arms for the Spanish rebellion. Hornblower had warned them that the Spanish kept a fifty-gun ship of the line, the _Natividad,_ in the Pacific, and that they might at any time need to halt their provisioning to fight her, but until they had word of her presence, the first order of business was to make the _Lydia_ ready for sea again. None of them liked being dependent on the shore for food and water. As the hold filled again, Hornblower relaxed visibly.

The _Natividad_ very obligingly did not make her appearance until the _Lydia_ was fully revictualled, and then arrived at a time which meant that she would not make the bay until it was well past sundown. As soon as he heard the news, Hornblower had had the _Lydia_ towed to the foot of the island at the entrance to the bay. Manguera Island Hornblower had said Hernandez called it. Though the land breeze was beginning to rise, they did not dare set sail, lest the moonlight shining off of it betray their presence to the _Natividad's_ lookout. 

Having given his orders, Hornblower disappeared into his cabin, betraying his anxiety only by the tense set of his shoulders. A few minutes Polwheal was summoned to the captain's cabin, and returned with invitations to dinner for Bush, Wellard, and Longley. Archie grinned a little to himself. Ever since their tense conversation in the cabin, Hornblower had been making a notable effort to extend his friendship to Bush again, though without overstepping the bounds of Naval etiquette, and Archie found it encouraging to no end. Ever since his mission to the Continent, which he still refused to speak of, for both diplomatic and personal reasons Archie suspected, Horatio had been rather withdrawn. When he had opened the secret orders from the Admiralty he had gone from withdrawn to tense. Over the course of their seven months' voyage, he had picked up the bad habit of taking out his tension on the nearest patient bystander. 

Unfortunately that had usually meant Bush, as Archie had managed to make it clear quite early on that he did not need to listen to deliberate rudeness. But it had been the result of thoughtlessness not malice, Archie was sure, for as soon as he had turned Hornblower's attention to his behaviour it had begun to change. Hornblower was not the sort of man to whom apologies came easily, and it would have been a grave breach of etiquette for the captain of a ship to apologise to his lieutenants, but he had found other ways of making it clear that Bush was in his good graces, even sharing with him his precious and intricate lunar calculations for longitude (which had made Archie laugh when he heard of it — it was such a typically Hornblower way of making amends). This was another such subtle gesture of goodwill, and, like all the previous ones, it eased Archie's mind just a little more, providing yet another piece of proof that the threefold cord of their friendship, though it might have been strained by their years apart, had not been broken. At the end of this voyage, he was sure, it would be stronger than ever.

Wellard and Longley looked a trifle nervous at being thus summoned to a meal with the captain and the first lieutenant, but being promising young men, both of them, they did their best not to show it as they trailed after Bush down the companionway. 

Bush, meanwhile, was wondering whether this invitation was a proof of favour or a renewed penance. Judging by their faces, Wellard and Longley felt much the same. The dinner was magnificent despite the ship being cleared for action, which necessitated that it be served cold, and Hornblower was a positively courtly host, effortlessly keeping the conversation alive, and including both Bush and the midshipmen. But afterwards he produced a deck of cards, and Bush braced himself. He was not fond of card games, even the humble vingt-et-un (though that he disliked partly on account of its French name), and whist, like Spanish and spherical trigonometry, was a subject in which he considered himself much too old to make any progress. The rubbers seemed interminable, though they certainly did take his mind off the coming action.

Beside him, Longley, who was nervous, fumbled his cards and narrowly escaped showing them all his hand, and Wellard, sitting by the captain, quite forgot even such rules of leading as Bush could remember. The appearance of Midshipman Savage, bringing Mr. Kennedy's compliments and the news that the _Natividad_ would be in range within half an hour, brought the play to a welcome end. Welcome, at least, to three of the party of four; Hornblower droned on about Longley's latest mistake for nearly a minute before consenting to go on deck. But Bush, watching the young man's face, concluded with an inward smile that the lecture on whist was doing quite well at distracting the young man from his fears of the coming battle, though it might well be instilling in him a deep terror of the card table.

Archie watched as Horatio came on deck, closely followed by Bush and the two nervous and excited midshipmen. Now a few whispered orders sent the prearranged crews into the launch and cutter, under his own command, and they pulled away into the shadow of the island, oarlocks muffled to prevent even the slightest noise from reaching the _Natividad,_ and waited for their cue.

They thus had front-row seats for the magnificent boarding action which followed. The _Natividad_ came gliding into the bay before the land breeze, her crew, confident in their supremacy over these seas where they had never yet met an enemy in twenty years of sailing, chattering as they worked, and not a man of them looking out well enough to see the _Lydia's_ spars against the darkness of the sky. Archie felt that they could not very well be blamed for this, however, as he himself could hardly see them, and he knew where to look.

One moment all was quiet save for the voices that carried over the water from the _Natividad's_ deck, and the next the _Lydia_ had sprung out of the blackness like a hunting panther. Her broadside rang out all together, a single peal of echoing thunder that spat fire and grapeshot over her foe's deck, and the next moment came the sound of the boarding crew "yelling like fiends from the pit," just as the captain had ordered.

That was Archie's cue, and he urged his boats forward. He had no need to be careful of noise now; the crew of the _Natividad_ probably would not have noticed if he had led his men into battle to the sound of drum and trumpet. They most certainly did notice, however, when they came swarming in through the lower gunports, yelling all the while. The arrival of the boat crews put a final end to whatever resistance the Spanish had still been putting up. The _Natividad_ was theirs, and, as he would find out later, not a man had been lost in the action. Hornblower forgot his dignity as captain sufficiently to wring both Bush and Archie by the hand in congratulation before remembering himself with a "ha-hm" and instructing Archie to take charge of the _Natividad_ along with a prize crew, and returning to the ship with the remainder of the men. 

Unusually, he ordered the Spanish officers to be brought aboard the _Lydia_ and put in irons belowdecks, but he explained hastily that it was to protect them from El Supremo, who would certainly kill them should he see them. Archie had already had a disposition to dislike Alvarado, both because of his blasphemous title and because of the way Hornblower had looked when he came back from his first meeting with the man. Now he had the first real evidence that his dislike was more than an ill-founded suspicion. Only a despot would murder surrendered prisoners. Not for the first time, he wondered if a man who had the daring to call himself almighty must necessarily be mad. _Madness in great ones must not unwatch'd go,_ he thought with a grim smile. _But all the same, I had rather not be the one assigned to do the watching._

Back aboard the _Lydia,_ despite the lateness of the hour, Captain Hornblower was wide awake, pacing up and down his cabin with his shoulders stooped to avoid hitting his head on the deck beams. Up on deck, though it was Gerard's watch, Bush was standing unobtrusively in the background. He had sensed his captain's worry as they came aboard and was determined to be ready for any eventuality. It was just as well that he was, for only a few minutes after Hornblower had disappeared into his cabin, Midshipman Hooker came scrambling up to the deck, looking nervous, to inform Bush that the captain wanted to speak to him.

He descended the ladder at once, and found Hornblower still in his day cabin, hat and coat discarded, fiddling absently with the charts on his desk. "Ah, Mr. Bush," he said, looking relieved at his lieutenant's appearance. 

"Sir."

"A very creditable piece of work with the _Natividad,_ Bush."

"Thank you, sir."

"Some prize she would make. 25 guineas to every enlisted man aboard!"

"That she would, sir." 

Bush was beginning to wonder where the conversation was going. Hornblower surely had no need to consult with him on such obvious matters. The next sentence made things clearer. "Unless, of course, I should give her to our ally." Hornblower looked as though he had just tasted something unpleasant.

"Sir?"

"El Supremo," Hornblower said, still looking like his ration beef had gone off, "wishes me to turn over the _Natividad_ and her crew to him, so that he can use her in his campaigns in South America."

"I...see, sir." 

"General Hernandez tells me that a ship is necessary in order to transport El Supremo and his army to San Salvador to begin their uprising. If we do not give him the _Natividad,_ we will have to take him and his staff aboard the _Lydia,_ or I have a suspicion he would slaughter our prize crew and take the _Natividad_ anyway."

Now Bush understood. "So we're between a rock and a hard place, sir."

"Just so, Mr. Bush. If I give the _Natividad_ to Alvarado, the crew loses their prize money. Not to mention the Admiralty will have something to say about my giving up a prize of war. But if I don't, I risk losing her anyway, or we have to take this madman aboard the _Lydia and_ risk losing the _Natividad_."

This was the first mention Hornblower had made of the man who called himself El Supremo being mad, but between the captain's queer behaviour since his first meeting with Alvarado and Kennedy's suspicions of the man, Bush was not surprised to hear it. "I'd say the Admiralty would be a sight angrier about us losing a prize than us giving her away, sir."

Hornblower looked anxiously at him. "They're not likely to be very forgiving either way," he said. "And who can say if they'll see our choices the way I do?"

"If things are bound to be unpleasant either way when we get home, sir, I'd just as soon not have a mad Dago aboard to worry about while we're here. And if we sent away a prize crew we'd be left short-handed for the voyage home, even if this Alvarado didn't have them killed."

Hornblower sighed. "Well. There's quicksand between the rock and the hard place, Mr. Bush, and I'll be sunk in it if I don't choose one or the other. The _Natividad_ shall be Alvarado's and we shall not be plagued with him further. I hope."

Archie had heaved a sigh of relief when the _Natividad_ set sail for San Salvador under the command of Vice-Admiral de Crespo, with her mad Supremo and his army aboard, and he had suspected that all the other officers were doing the same. The crew had been less than pleased at the loss of their prize money, which they had been eagerly spending in their imaginations since the night of the _Natividad's_ capture, but Bush had dropped a hint or two that they might have had to host the Supremo and his staff on board if they hadn't given up their prize, and that gain, in Archie's opinion anyway, rather balanced out the loss. His brief sight of the man on board the _Natividad_ when they turned it over to him had been more than enough to convince him that this was the sort of ally who was best kept at as great a distance as possible. 

Now they had gone back to following Admiralty orders instead of dancing around the ego of a madman. Hornblower had looked just as relieved as Archie felt when they sailed for Panama, and had taken to smiling to himself as he took his habitual walk up and down the quarterdeck, though he always did his best to hide it. Now, they were outside Panama, the _Natividad_ was nowhere in sight, and the weather was as pleasant as anyone could wish.

It was naturally then that further trouble made its appearance, in the form of a Spanish lugger flying a white ensign.

Bush regarded the lugger's captain with deep skepticism as he presented two letters to Hornblower, speaking animatedly in Spanish and greeting him with apparent friendship. Hornblower, in contrast, was looking at the letters he had been handed with well-concealed dread. Bush looked curiously at him, wondering what news the Dons could have brought that would put his captain so out of countenance. 

"It appears, Mr. Bush, that the Spanish have made peace with England," Hornblower said grimly, answering Bush's look.

The ramifications of this were only just beginning to unfold in Bush's mind when he was forced to turn aside from them to order the _Natividad's_ officers brought on deck, to prove Hornblower's claim of having captured her. Their appearance discomfited both them and the lugger's captain very much indeed, to Bush's private amusement. Then, as Hornblower turned away from the furious discussion in Spanish to examine the letters he had been given, a woman's voice, speaking English, broke in on their respective thoughts, and Bush only just prevented his jaw from falling down to the deck. Of all the sorts of trouble he had thought that lugger might bring, this was certainly not one of them.

Lady Barbara Wellesley looked curiously up at the first British ship she had seen in months. She was a frigate, with faded gilding on her stern which proclaimed her to be the _Lydia,_ and bore clear signs of a long voyage. Naturally, as for her to be here it would have had to be months since she left England, and Barbara wondered why the British Navy would send a single ship so far from the rest of the fleet. 

Then a rope ladder was lowered over the side for her (poor Hebe, who did not climb ladders, had to be satisfied with standing on the baggage as the men prepared to sway it aboard in a net, and was not best pleased with the arrangement), and she climbed swiftly up the side of the ship. There was an officer waiting to help her onto the deck. She gave him her hand more for form's sake than because she needed it, and found herself looking into a pair of very bright, smiling blue eyes. "Welcome aboard, ma'am," he said in a pleasant tenor voice. "Archie Kennedy, second lieutenant, at your service."

"Barbara Wellesley. It's a pleasure to meet you, Lieutenant Kennedy. Would you be so kind as to direct me to the captain?"

"Captain Hornblower is aft with the Dons who brought you aboard, your Ladyship," Kennedy said.

The captain of the lugger was saying something animated and cheerful in rapid Spanish, of which she could follow most but not all. A tall, lean man in a slightly worn post-captain's dress uniform (which matched all the other uniforms she could see as well; the ship was not the only thing that showed signs of several months' constant wear and tear) was listening intently to him, and occasionally responding in the same language, in which he seemed to be perfectly fluent, though his accent had an odd trick to it that she had never heard before. Barbara guessed that the news of the alliance between England and Spain was news indeed to Captain Hornblower, who had sailed all the way to the Pacific without any reliable word from England, but she could read nothing at all in his face except for intent focus. He did not yet seem to have noticed her.

Neither had the man beside him, whom she guessed to be his first lieutenant. He was both broad and tall, taller than his captain, with a weathered face that looked like it had been carved out of the same wood as the ship, and incongruously bright blue eyes. He was watching the conversation keenly, and she wondered if everyone aboard the ship spoke Spanish, and what errand they were here upon.

She listened in impressed amusement to Hornblower's terse explanation of the fate of the _Natividad_ and the Spanish captain's furious expostulations with the prisoners whom Hornblower produced as proof of his story. Then, as Hornblower turned away to look at the Admiralty letter, she stepped forward to make her presence known. "Are you the captain of this ship, sir?" she asked. 

Hornblower froze at the sound of her voice, and then whirled around to face her. For an instant, shock was written on his face, which was surprisingly expressive in the moment, and in his wide brown eyes. Then he wiped his face clean again like a slate, and cleared his throat awkwardly. The first lieutenant, whose jaw had dropped at her appearance, recovered himself and exchanged grins with Kennedy, and she wondered what about the captain clearing his throat was so amusing. Hornblower ignored them, looking at her as fixedly as he had a moment ago been examining the letters. His full focus had an almost unnerving intensity to it. "Captain Hornblower, at your service, ma'am," he said, giving her the briefest of possible nods. 

His face remained unreadable, but she thought she caught a flicker of displeasure in his eyes. Certainly his bow could only have been called polite by someone with the charity of a saint. Well. Two could play at that game. "Lady Barbara Wellesley," she replied, with a curtsey just deep enough to pass for formal and not quite deep enough to be truly polite. "I wrote you a note, Captain Hornblower, requesting a passage to England. I trust you received it."

"I did, ma'am. But I do not think it is wise for your ladyship to join this ship." 

Hornblower's voice was matter-of-fact, as though he were informing her that the tide was rising. Barbara was, against her will, impressed. People tended to melt into affability, or downright sycophancy, when they heard her last name. Sometimes it could be an annoyance, but it also made it far easier for her to do what she wished to do. It was a strange fortune that she should find that the captain of the only British ship in the Pacific was also one of the only people she had met who did not bow instantly to the Wellesley name. However, his tone had been sharp and slightly dismissive, and that she did not appreciate. "Please tell me why, sir," she answered him, keeping her voice civil with a slight effort.

If her tone disconcerted him at all he did not show it. "Because, ma'am, we shall be clearing shortly to seek out an enemy and fight him. And after that, ma'am, we shall have to return to England round Cape Horn. Your ladyship would be well advised to make your way across the Isthmus. From Porto Bello you can easily reach Jamaica and engage a berth in the West India packet which is accustomed to female passengers." 

A touch of exasperation had slipped into his voice with the last sentence and Barbara raised her eyebrows at him. "In my letter," _which I doubt you have read,_ "I informed you that there was yellow fever in Porto Bello." 

Perhaps that was not quite fair, as the letter could not have arrived more than five minutes before she did and had been accompanied by letters from the Admiralty, but Captain Hornblower's manner was beginning to put her back up. Hornblower shuffled the letters in his hands about until hers was on the top, broke the seal, and examined the contents with a faint scowl.

"A thousand persons died there of it last week," she continued. "It was on the outbreak of the disease that I removed from Porto Bello to Panama. At any day it may appear here as well."

"May I ask why your ladyship was in Porto Bello, then?" he asked, the exasperation becoming more prominent.

"Because, sir, the West India packet in which I was a female passenger was captured by a Spanish privateer and brought there." Barbara was exasperated in her own right now, so she allowed herself to add, "I regret, sir, that I cannot tell you the name of my grandmother's cook, but I shall be glad to answer any further questions which a gentleman of breeding would ask."

She was rather satisfied to see that that speech put him quite out of countenance. In fact, he blushed so furiously that it was visible through the deep tan of his face. "B-but we are going out in this ship to fight," he stammered. " _Natividad's_ got twice our force. It will be d-dangerous."

She could not help laughing a little at this helpless protest, so very different from his earlier insistent and dismissive tones. His awkwardness was almost endearing, and she softened her voice a little. "I would far rather," she said, "be on board your ship, whomever you have to fight, than be in Panama with the _vomito negro_."

"But Cape Horn, ma'am?" he asked, regaining some of his composure.

"I have no knowledge of this Cape Horn of yours. But I have twice rounded the Cape of Good Hope during my brother's Governor-Generalship, and I assure you, Captain, I have never yet been seasick."

Horatio gave Archie a look of helpless appeal over Lady Barbara's shoulder. Archie had been deeply enjoying the spectacle of his captain slowly digging himself into a deeper and deeper hole as the conversation went on, though he was not overly keen on the idea of a woman on board the _Lydia_ himself, certainly not in a battle such as they were about to face. However, he also knew when the action had been lost and it was time to strike the colours. He gave a shrug of his eyebrows. Horatio made a face that meant he had nearly rolled his eyes in return and stopped himself only just in time, but he also took the hint. "Ma'am, if this is the course you are set on it will, for myself, give me the greatest pleasure to have you aboard. However, I feel that it is my duty to represent to you one last time in the strongest terms the dangers to which you may be exposed."

"Thank you, Captain," she said, gracious in victory, and Archie grinned at Horatio's resigned expression. "But I will risk the dangers of the _Lydia_ rather than the dangers of the yellow fever."

Archie set the men to work swaying her dunnage aboard, while Horatio ordered his things cleared out of his cabin, and apologised to Bush for putting him out of the little closet which he called a cabin. Really he should have apologised to Archie, for it was he and Gerard, most likely, as the two most junior lieutenants, who would end up sharing a cabin, but Archie did not particularly mind.

Immediately afterwards Horatio had to go ashore to pay his respects to the Viceroy of Panama. Lady Barbara's assorted chests and boxes were soon stowed in the captain's storeroom, as he had ordered, with the exception of the one sea chest which she said contained all she needed for the voyage. That went into the captain's cabin. _Well, best think of it as Lady Barbara's cabin for the present, and avoid unfortunate implications._

Her ladyship reappeared on deck a few minutes later, and there followed an interval of awkwardness in which nobody was quite sure what to do or say. Finally, Bush broke the silence by calling over one of the sailmaker's mates to rig a hammock chair for her ladyship. She smiled, and thanked him prettily, and the silence was broken. She was a pleasant conversationalist, who graciously ignored any slips in etiquette that might be expected from men so long separated from civilian society, and the time passed quickly until the afternoon, when the return of the captain's gig signalled Hornblower's arrival. 

He stepped onto deck with somewhat more than his usual caution, and from that, combined with the unhappiness on his face and his own previous experiences of hospitality in port, Archie suspected that the Viceroy had been generous with his wine and Horatio had been unable to avoid drinking it. Hornblower was steadfast in his dislike of being even slightly drunk. The only exception Archie knew of to that rule had been in Kingston, where, apparently, newly-minted Captain Bush and his then-first lieutenant had made a very serious effort to drink the town dry, and come quite close to succeeding.

Archie dismissed the memories of Kingston, pleasant and otherwise, as Hornblower, after exchanging brief greetings with him and Bush, and bowing awkwardly in her ladyship's direction, gave the order to weigh anchor and make sail. Then he went hurriedly below, evidently in a fairly foul temper. A few moments later there was a dull thud, followed by an oath, and Bush and Kennedy, who had learned by harsh experience that the gunroom cabins had low ceilings, winced in concert.

Hornblower came back above decks again, now wearing his undress uniform, just in time to hear of the discovery that the anchor was fouled. Only his lieutenants were near enough to hear the vehemently muttered, "Hell fire!" with which he greeted this news.

They quite agreed with his sentiment — a fouled anchor might mean anything from a momentary inconvenience to several hours' delay, depending on how hard it was fast. The possibility of leaving the anchor and cable behind never seriously crossed either of their minds; both of them knew that Hornblower would never do such a thing, certainly not under the eyes of a recently hostile port.

The messenger cable was replaced in record time, for there was not a man on the ship who was not conscious of the indignity of a fouled anchor in a foreign port and eager to set matters to rights. However, just as before, the efforts of the men on the capstan were in vain. Archie felt a minute change in the angle of the deck beneath his feet and realised that they were actually pulling the ship's bows down rather than hauling the anchor up. Hornblower had felt the same. "Avast heaving!" he roared.

There was nothing for it but to sail the anchor out of the ground, a tricky piece of seamanship, and one which might, judged incorrectly, lead to damage in the rigging, or even a dismasted ship. Horatio's faint scowl told Archie that he had thought of this already, as usual. He would ordinarily be pacing the deck by now, but was now standing quite still, with his shoulders tensed almost up to his ears. Archie wondered at it until he saw Bush glance from Lady Barbara to the captain, mirth dancing in his blue eyes, and understood all in a rush. He had to stifle his laughter, despite their current situation. He caught himself, not for the first time, missing the days when they had all three been lieutenants together and Horatio's awkwardness would have been an opportunity for teasing. But the second lieutenant of a frigate could not quiz his captain about his feelings for a lady. He turned his attention back to the men at the braces.

Hornblower, as Archie and Bush could both have predicted, but probably contrary to his own expectations, sailed the anchor out of the ground as neatly as any man could have wished. Harrison, the bosun, gave a wild yell from for'ard, announcing that the anchor was free, and some of the tension left Hornblower's shoulders. He exchanged smiles with his lieutenants and looked over the deck in satisfaction, before his eyes landed on Lady Barbara again and his face went quite blank. "Ha-hm," he said. "Set all sail, Mr. Bush."

Then he dove below in something that might charitably have been called a hasty retreat. Lady Barbara looked curious. Bush shook his head with a sigh. Archie reflected, internally, that this was going to be a very interesting voyage.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lady Barbara: argues with Hornblower and wins
> 
> H: Hornblower.exe has encountered an unexpected runtime error. Rebooting in 60 seconds...59...58...
> 
> Comments feed the muse and encourage the author!


	3. The Storm Breaks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The _Lydia_ goes hunting. Lady Barbara and the _Lydia's_ officers observe each other and slowly begin to come to terms.
> 
> Then they find what they were looking for.

Like most missions, in Bush's experience, the hunt for the _Natividad_ and El Supremo started out with a great deal of waiting and a great deal of seemingly aimless sailing. Hornblower suspected that El Supremo, or his admiral de Crespo, was hunting for the legendary Manila galleon which had, when Spain was the enemy of England, been such a tantalising prize to the _Lydia's_ crew. But while that gave them an idea of where to look, finding a single fourth-rate along the entire Spanish American coast was still a time-consuming endeavour.

Bush was never bored when he was on a ship, or he might perhaps have resented these long days and weeks of waiting, of looking into bay after bay and finding it empty, and past headland after headland into more open sea with not a sail in sight. As it was, however, the anticipation of the battle added just the dash of excitement that was needed to turn this voyage from ordinary and reasonably enjoyable to exceptional. Even the slightly disconcerting presence of Lady Barbara, of whom he had not yet decided his opinion, could not dull his pleasure in seeing the _Lydia_ on the hunt, her decks cleared for action and her crew answering to orders with the drilled precision that only seven months' sailing could produce, waiting patiently as she drew closer to her prey, and of knowing himself a part of a crew that was as good or better than any other in the Navy. If there was a captain alive who could, in a single-ship action, sink a ship with twice his guns, it was Hornblower, and if there was a crew alive that could carry out his orders to that end, it was the crew of the _Lydia,_ and Bush rejoiced in both these facts.

But, of course, even a ship that is on the hunt cannot remain on the alert for twenty-four hours out of the twenty-four. Or rather, the ship can, but her individual crew cannot. Despite the smell of battle in the breeze, the officers and men of the _Lydia_ fell into a rather peaceful routine after leaving Panama. After the first dinner with Lady Barbara, during which Bush at last made up his mind that she was the right sort, Hornblower at the same time discovered that there was at last another whist player on the ship who could match him in skill. From then on there was no escaping the almost nightly games, but her ladyship's presence went far towards making them bearable, though her obvious skill meant that when Bush found himself partnered with her he spent most of the rubber in an agony of worry lest his own unskilled playing hamper hers.

Whist, however, was a familiar trial to Bush after eight months in Hornblower's close society, so he accepted his penance philosophically and did not allow it to spoil his enjoyment of the voyage. Watching Lady Barbara and the captain in speech with each other, however, recalled to him a set of worries that he had last felt in Portsmouth. Consulting with Kennedy, he concluded that something would have to be done.

On most nights, Barbara was invited to dine with the captain and one or two of the lieutenants, with the balance of the group made up by midshipmen, who seemed to be invited on a regular rotation. As a rule the party for dinner was made up of four, so that they could play a rubber at whist afterwards. Whist, she had soon discovered, was one of the only interests outside his career that Captain Hornblower would admit to having. He was a scientifically brilliant player and she found great enjoyment in matching wits with him. Not to mention that it was an excellent opportunity to learn something more of the character of his officers than was apparent in their behaviour on deck.

Kennedy, for instance, was a casual player who had probably only learned to oblige his captain, but showed occasional flashes of intuitive brilliance that could save trick after trick from the jaws of defeat. Besides that, he demonstrated a considerable ability to adapt his play to the habits of his partner, which meant that when he was partnered with her, they beat Hornblower as often as not. Gerard was more flash than substance, playing for dramatic effect and his own entertainment rather than to win. Probably he had given up long ago on ever defeating his captain. The midshipmen, Longley, Wellard, Savage, and Hooker, were universally too nervous at being in the presence of their officers _and_ a lady to play well. Bush, of whom she was aware mostly as an imperturbable, silent and solid presence standing at his captain's shoulder and occasionally roaring out orders or reproofs in a bellow that could shake the deck, revealed himself at the card table to be unexpectedly and rather endearingly human, and a very poor player indeed, though he had clearly put in some study, probably, like Kennedy, to oblige his captain. Hornblower was still trying to cure him of the unfortunate habit of asking, "What are trumps?" midway through each hand, and she had more than once suppressed the impulse to pat his hand when he made a particularly bad mistake and began to apologise to the room in general for it.

These evenings of dinner and whist with the captain had become such a tradition that Barbara was a trifle surprised to be invited to dinner in the gunroom one evening when Hornblower was pacing the decks, evidently in a black mood, and likely to be very poor company for dinner if he condescended to invite anyone at all. She had yet to visit the sanctum sanctorum of the ship's officers, such as it was, and had to confess to a certain curiosity as to what they were like when out from under Hornblower's gimlet eye, and so she accepted with a smile, and watched in amusement as young Wellard flushed bright red and fled to carry her response to his seniors.

The evening proved to be nearly as enjoyable as those she had spent in the captain's company, despite the slightly crowded space (it seemed that an invitation had also been extended to the midshipmen). Kennedy and Gerard provided the bulk of the conversation, with occasional comments from Bush, who somehow, despite being easily the tallest man in the room and sitting at the head of the table, mostly effaced himself from the conversation, though he was scrupulously polite when addressed. Kennedy was better educated than she would have expected, and she found an unexpected pleasure in discussing the modern poets with him. Halfway through dinner she discovered that his great love was Shakespeare, and most of the rest of the evening passed away in a discussion of the Sonnets, in which Wellard proved to be an unexpectedly interested participant. She would have felt guilty at choosing a topic which seemed to largely exclude the others, but they all seemed to be quite content to listen. She noticed one or two fond glances directed at Kennedy from the other occupants of the gunroom when he waxed particularly passionate in his exposition, and guessed that this was a familiar topic to them.

There was no mention of playing whist, or any other game, after dinner, and she assumed that that was in deference to Bush's tendency to look at a deck of cards the way other men might have contemplated a firing squad. Gerard touched his hat and stepped out, as it was his watch, but Bush and Kennedy remained behind a little longer. She was about to bid them goodnight and thank them for an unexpectedly enjoyable evening, when Kennedy said softly, "Your ladyship, might we have a word?"

"Certainly," she said, confused.

There was a slightly awkward silence in which the two men exchanged uncomfortable glances, as though uncertain how to broach whatever subject they had in mind, or perhaps uncertain as to which of them ought to start. Finally Bush faced her, squaring his shoulders as though she were the captain inspecting the ship of a Sunday. "We wanted to ask, ma'am...what are your intentions towards the Captain?"

 _What?_ "I beg your pardon, Lieutenant Bush, I am not at all certain what you mean."

Bush carried on doggedly. "He likes you, ma'am. A great deal. I've never seen him like this for a lady before. But he's the sort that feels things. If you don't care about him, he'll take it hard. So Mr. Kennedy and I wanted to ask you what you mean to do."

 _Her intentions towards the captain?_ Barbara was beginning to be a little offended. "Lieutenant Bush," she said frostily, "I really do not see how my behaviour towards Captain Hornblower is anyone's business but mine and Captain Hornblower's, and I will thank you not to interfere in matters which are not yours to touch."

Kennedy stepped in at this juncture, one hand extended in a placating gesture. "He hasn't got any family, ma'am," he said. "There's only Mr. Bush and me. We don't want to meddle in things that aren't our business, but we'd rather meddle than see him hurt. We know you're to be married to Admiral Leighton. If the captain thinks you care for him, and you leave to marry Leighton, it'll grieve him. Please understand, your Ladyship, we're not doing this to be impertinent."

There was such earnest concern in their faces that Barbara found her rising irritation melting away. "You may rest assured, gentlemen, that my _intentions_ towards Captain Hornblower are only the most honourable," she said with a slight smile. "More than that is his to decide."

Both men visibly relaxed, and Barbara realised that they had both been keenly conscious of the dangers they had run in confronting her like this. One word from a Wellesley could break the career of nearly anyone in the navy, let alone two lieutenants with no family connexions to speak of. "Captain Hornblower is fortunate in his officers," she said, "whatever else he may be."

She was deeply amused to see the stoic and impassive Bush duck his head, with an expression which hinted that he would have been blushing if his weathered complexion would have allowed it. She met Kennedy's smiling eyes and there was a moment of perfect understanding between them. "Well, your Ladyship, we should bid you goodnight," he said, rescuing the still embarrassed Bush.

"Goodnight then, gentlemen," she said, "but I think, after what has been said between us this evening, you should call me Lady Barbara."

That rendered them both speechless, she noted with a smile, sweeping out of the gunroom towards her cabin. 

It was only after her curious conversation with Bush and Kennedy that Barbara realised how often and how closely she and Hornblower had been watched. One or both of the senior officers — or occasionally Wellard, who seemed devoted to her and to Kennedy in equal measure — had always been on deck whenever she and the captain were together. Oh, there had always been a reason, whether it was to bawl out an unfortunate midshipman or to simply scan the horizon through a telescope (an activity which, she had soon learned, exempted one from any questions in the Navy) but they had always been there. She was not certain at first whether to be impressed by the skill with which this surveillance had been carried out, or somewhat offended that they had thought it necessary in the first place. But then she had remembered the genuine worry on Bush and Kennedy's faces as they explained to her that she had it in her power to hurt their captain, and that had brought to mind a hundred other times that she had seen one or the other of them shadowing Hornblower as he drove himself harder than any other man aboard in the hunt for the _Natividad,_ with a steadying hand ready when he swayed and a ship's biscuit in a pocket to hand him in exchange for a telescope so that he would eat something, and realised that their surveillance had really been more for his sake than for hers. Its withdrawal meant that they considered her a part of their little alliance to look after Hornblower now, and she found herself more moved than she would have expected by that expression of trust. As the days went on, too, she grew to understand more and more why the alliance was necessary. Hornblower could not be said to be nervous, precisely, about the _Natividad,_ but in his single-minded focus on the hunt, he often forgot everything else. 

In the Gulf of Tehuantepec they found storms, which brought with them a coolness that was quite delightful after the months of tropical heat which she had endured, first in Panama and then on board the Lydia. She caught herself exchanging an almost conspiratorial smile with Bush, who was on watch, and seemed to take as much pleasure in the wild weather as she did herself, as the wind whipped the spray around them. Hornblower appeared shortly afterwards, summoned by the change in the ship's motion, she suspected, and made an attempt to send her below. She refused, but kindly, as she knew it had been born of real concern for her and not of his former impatience with her presence aboard. Then the lookout hailed the deck with the word that a sail was in sight. Midshipman Knyvett reported shortly afterwards that it was indeed the _Natividad._ Hornblower immediately ceased to be the man she had slowly come to realise existed under the facade of impassive stoicism, and became the ship's captain. Only after he had given his orders to prepare for battle, and the drums were rolling out as the men hastened to their stations, did he turn back to her, anxiety in his face. "Your place is below, Lady Barbara," he said firmly. "Take your maid with you. You must stay in the cockpit until the action is over — no, not the cockpit. Go to the cable tier."

Barbara was not accustomed to being ordered about in this fashion, but from this man, in these circumstances, she could not resent it. Still, she felt as though she should do something more than cower in the cable tier while the battle went on. "Captain — " she began, not entirely sure what she meant to say.

Hornblower interrupted her. "Mr. Clay!" he rasped. "Conduct her ladyship and her maid to the cable tier. See that she is safe before you leave her. Those are my _orders,_ Mr. Clay. Ha-hm."

Barbara knew that further argument was futile, and knew, moreover, that her presence on deck or anywhere exposed to the fall of shot would only distract the officers and crew from their work. She smiled and waved to Hornblower as she went below, to show him that she did not resent his harshness, and saw a confused look cross his face for a moment before it was smoothed away as he turned back to the business of battle.

Barbara would never have known how long she and Hebe spent in the cable tier unless she had asked afterwards. It seemed an interminable time that she spent, hunched awkwardly on a slimy coil of rope, listening to the crashes and shouts and screams filtering down from above. Hebe was wailing in fear, and Barbara could not find it in herself to be angry with her for it. Gradually the acrid smell of powder smoke drifted down into their refuge and filled the air, but other than that there seemed to be no change over time. There was no predicting when the next crash and boom of guns would come, or when the motion of the ship would change. Barbara caught herself tensing in the brief silences, as though waiting for a blow to fall, and forced her muscles to relax. She wondered what she would find if she were to go on deck, if she were ever to go on deck again — if Hornblower still lived in the hail of metal that she knew by sound and feel must be pounding the _Lydia,_ if the battle was going well or badly, if the _Natividad_ had won the tense contest for the weather-gage that had begun the instant she and the _Lydia_ had sighted each other.

On deck, any man not accustomed to the sights and sounds and smells of a battle at sea might well have thought that the gods had come down from old Olympus to do battle, and Vulcan's forge contested against Neptune's waves and Jupiter's lightning. The men at the guns might have been Cyclopes, stripped to the waist in the heat and smoke and stench of Mount Aetna, hammering out armour for Achilles with a hideous din. Caught up in the terrible joy of battle, Archie supposed that that made Horatio the Jupiter who sent the _Lydia_ dancing, rejoicing, before the wind, and Bush the Vulcan who drove the men at the forges. _Which leaves me to be Poseidon, I suppose,_ he thought whimsically. _Though really I'd be a better Mercury. And Gerard to be another Cyclops._ "Fire!" he roared, as the guns came to bear again. _To the senior officers go the highest honours, after all._ A moment later, he added, with a grim laugh, _I suppose that makes de Crespo Hades._

Jupiter was, as ever, doing his best to remain calm despite the horrors that had been unleashed around him, as was only fitting to a king of the gods. Vulcan was not acting terribly godlike at the moment, for the _Lydia's_ broadside had just struck home on the _Natividad_ and he was leaping up and down on the quarterdeck in his glee, thumping his right fist into his left hand. Archie could not actually hear him over the din but he had heard Bush react to a well-laid broadside before, and could guess that he was swearing volubly and delightedly.

Then they came about, and Archie knew that to reach the _Natividad's_ vulnerable stern again they would have to endure her broadside. There were a tense few seconds that seemed to stretch out into minutes as they waited, and then the _Natividad's_ gunports, upper and lower, belched forth fire and smoke, and the world dissolved into a chaos of noise and smoke. When Archie could think again, the mizzen mast was fallen, trailing to one side of the _Lydia,_ and it had taken the main t'gallant mast with it. Even before Horatio's voice, shrill with the excitement and stress of battle, rang out over the clamour, Archie was gathering men to go aft and begin to cut the wreckage free. Gerard could see to the gun crews for the moment.

He passed Bush, sitting up on the deck with his head in his hands, struck by some piece of the falling rigging, but if he was sitting up then there was no call to worry about him at present. Dimly he was aware of Horatio shouting to Galbraith to get the heads'ls in, and realised that this might balance the loss of the mizzen mast and make it possible to lie to the wind again. But for the moment, all other concerns were eclipsed by the necessity of freeing the _Lydia_ from the wreckage which was trailing her like a sea anchor, robbing her of her best advantage in this battle, her maneuverability, and leaving her vulnerable to the _Natividad's_ fire. Somewhere to his right he caught sight of Horatio with an axe in his hand, doing the same thing as he was, cutting each piece of the rigging that was holding the fallen mast to the ship as it tightened.

The _Natividad_ managed to finish wearing round — Archie was intensely grateful that she was a slow and clumsy ship — and her broadside surrounded them with smoke and fire and noise once more. When it all cleared, everything was deadly quiet. He and Horatio were almost the only living men on the quarterdeck. Poor Clay was lying dead at his feet, along with God only knew how many others, but there was no time to mourn that. Archie looked for the next piece of taut rigging.

The mizzen topmast stay was severed by an unseen hand, suddenly, and the ship was free. Archie looked up and saw that Bush was in the maintop. Evidently he had had the sense to see what neither Horatio nor Archie, in their desperation to free the ship, had: that it might be easier to cut through the rigging from the mast than on deck.

The _Natividad_ had worn ship again, but they were no longer helpless, and he exchanged a wild glance of relief and joy with Horatio as his captain gave the orders to bring the _Lydia_ about. They need no longer endure the brutal raking of the _Natividad's_ twenty-four pounders without responding.

Archie returned to the guns, and knew that his voice was little more than a hoarse scream as he ordered the men to fire. "There goes the foremast!" came Gerard's voice, and he too sounded a little mad and more than a little wild in his relief and exultation.

The _Natividad's_ foremast was gone, and it had taken her main topmast with it. She turned up into the wind, and the _Lydia_ turned downwind despite the best efforts of her steersmen. The two ships were, for the moment, unable to harm each other. There was a lull in the storm of men, if not the storm of nature.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The battle begins! Like Forester, I'm cutting this into two chapters, to keep it from becoming utterly unwieldy, so Part 2 will hopefully be showing up tomorrow or the day after.
> 
> Comments feed the muse and encourage the author!


	4. Beat to Quarters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The _Lydia_ and the _Natividad_ battle to the death.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All right, ladies and gents, buckle up. This one's gonna be one heck of a ride.

Even after the thunder and rumble of guns stopped, it was some time before Barbara dared to venture out on deck, Hebe all but clinging to her skirts. Her maid's terror, strangely, lent her courage even as she passed the orlop deck where men were moaning and screaming, and stepped out onto the deck, into the midst of a scene the like of which she had never even imagined. The decks were stained with blood and powder. A cannon, knocked off of its carriage, was rolling free over the deck, hunted by Gerard and nearly seventy men with ropes and hammocks. A roll of the ship sent it tumbling towards her and Hebe, and Kennedy seized each of them roughly by an arm and hauled them out of the gun's way just in time, as the thing fetched up against the mainmast with a shattering crash. Gerard, reckless of life and limb, dove forward to put a line through the eye tackle, yelling as he did for hammocks.

A few moments of frenzied activity later, and the gun was safely lashed to the mainmast, and Gerard stood up, panting, and leaned against the now secured gun for a moment, as though only just then realising how near he had come to a terrible death. Kennedy let go of Barbara's arm without even an apology. "This deck is no place for you, ma'am," he shouted over the noise, and she could hear the exhaustion in his voice. 

Somewhere nearby Hornblower was talking to the ship's carpenter about pumps and fothering sails, whatever that might mean. She looked around wildly for other familiar figures, and saw that Bush, distinguishable from the other toiling men only by his uniform coat, was in the maintop, busily arranging a complicated apparatus of massive ropes and tackles which were already being put into place around an enormous length of wood. She guessed that it was meant to replace the missing mast. Everywhere the ship was a hive of activity, and none of the men here had time to spare from their duties to attend to her. "I can see that," she said without resentment. "But I had no intention of obstructing. I only wished to ask after the battle, and then to shut myself in my cabin."

Hornblower had noticed her and come over to join the conversation, and at this he went off into peals of high-pitched, almost hysterical laughter. Kennedy reached for his shoulder to steady him, but the captain cut himself off with a shake of his head before his lieutenant could reach him. "Four of the _Natividad's_ broadsides have gone through that cabin, your ladyship," he said, constraining himself with a grim effort to speak normally. "I regret that there is no course open to you but to go back whence you have come. There is no other place in the ship that can accommodate you at present."

Hornblower's coat was torn across the breast, and he was covered in soot and sweat and blood. But despite the filth of battle, she could see that his face was pale and strained under its tan. She did not wish to go back to the cable tier, but she knew that it would be absurd to complain to him of rats and smells and noises when he had been up here in the Hades of which she had heard only the rumour. "Very good, Captain," she said.

"The battle is stopped for the present," Kennedy said, escorting her off of the quarterdeck with punctilious politeness despite his obvious weariness. "The _Natividad_ is as crippled as we, if not more. For the present neither of us can touch the other. The ship that is ready for battle first will prevail, I think, if only this damn storm — sorry, your Ladyship — would drop a little."

"There's no need to apologise, Mr. Kennedy," she said as he handed her down the stairs. "Oh, Polwheal," she said, nearly running into the captain's steward. "Do excuse me."

"The man of the hour," said Kennedy, lowering his voice to a hoarse whisper. "Polwheal, get the captain's boat cloak and that hammock chair ready, would you? I think he's going to want to stay on deck tonight. But see if you can find someplace comfortable for Lady Barbara belowdecks first."

"Aye aye, sir," said Polwheal. "Maybe there's a bit of the orlop as could be screened off with a hammock in it?"

"If there's nowhere better that'll do. If her ladyship doesn't mind?"

The word "hammock" had brought home to Barbara the realisation that she was weary both in mind and body. "If it has a hammock, Polwheal, I don't believe I could possibly ask for more."

Polwheal gave her a wry and understanding grin. "Aye aye...yes, ma'am, that is."

She followed him gratefully, and watched in slight awe as he produced curtains and a hammock for her. Hebe curled up on the floor and went to sleep at once, but Polwheal told her to "wait just one minute, your ladyship, I'll be back," and returned with a plate of cold chicken and a glass of wine. 

Heaven only knew where he had found it, and she appreciated the effort, but she felt sure that she could eat nothing, and said so. But Polwheal somehow got the plate into her hands and persuaded her to sit down on a sea chest, and when she had drunk a little of the wine she found that she could eat after all.

She could hear shouting up on deck, Hornblower's voice ringing out in time to the rhythm of the waves, but she did not have the energy of mind to wonder what this might mean. She had nearly finished her meal when Lieutenant Bush put his head around the corner. Seen closely, he made rather a wild sight. His uniform was stained with blood, and so was the rag bound carelessly around his brows, and his cocked hat was nowhere to be seen. But his expression was all concern, and he nodded respectfully to her before addressing Polwheal. "Captain's sent me below," he said. "Won't hear of going to sleep himself until the action's over."

"I've got these all ready," Polwheal said, holding out a bundle of hammock chair and boat cloak. "Mr. Kennedy said I'd be wanting them."

"And so we shall," said Kennedy, joining the little group. "Here, I'll take the chair up to him. You'd better find some food, Polwheal. He hasn't eaten since breakfast, I don't think."

"He hasn't," Bush confirmed, taking the cloak from Polwheal, who scurried off to find a second plate. "And get some dry clothes out of his storeroom!" he added to the steward's retreating back. "There's not a man on that deck who's not soaked through by now."

Bush and Kennedy were both illustrating that point themselves, but neither seemed concerned by it. "Here," Kennedy said, "I'll take these up now."

"Better not," Bush answered with a shake of his head. "I said he ought to go and rest just now and he'd hear nothing of it. Polwheal'll do better than we could."

Kennedy sighed. "Horatio and his cursed pride," he said wearily. "He does know he's human, doesn't he?"

"Aye, but he'd rather we didn't."

Barbara hid a smile in her cup. The two of them might have been thought to have forgotten her presence entirely, were it not that she was quite certain that there had been many such conversations before, held carefully out of her hearing. Further proof that they were quite aware of her existence was afforded when Kennedy turned to her and asked, "How is it with you, your ladyship?"

She had finished her meal now, and set aside the plate and cup carefully, where they would not roll across the floor with the ship's motion. "I don't quite know, to be honest," she said. "Except that I'm far too tired to have been doing nothing but sit in the cable tier all day."

Kennedy shook his head. "The only thing worse than a battle is waiting for a battle to be over," he said. "We'd better go now and leave you be, your ladyship. And Horatio may be a little foolish with his own health, but he had a point sending you below, William. You look rather fearful with that rag around your head, all over blood."

Bush looked a trifle sheepish. "He did say I ought to have someone look at it, but I don't think there's time for that. It was only a glancing hit."

"From a tackle the size of my two fists together," Archie retorted. "McRae and Laurie are being mostly useless anyway; you won't do anyone any harm by interrupting them."

Bush looked as though he would have liked to protest further. Barbara quietly put her head out of the little screened-off berth and called for a length of bandage and a damp cloth. 

"What for, your ladyship?" Bush asked, looking curiously at her.

"Sit down on that sea chest," she said firmly to him, and Kennedy's eyes met hers, dancing with laughter.

Bush did as she told him, though he still looked confused. "I'm going to look after that cut of yours," she said. "The surgeon can go on with his work outside and you won't have to trouble anyone else for help."

Bush looked as though he thought there was a hole somewhere in this logic, but submitted to having the ragged cut on his forehead cleaned and properly bandaged. Kennedy was still needed on deck, and excused himself as soon as Polwheal appeared to collect the captain's boat cloak from him. Bush beat a hasty retreat as soon as she was done with the bandages, and she was faintly amused at his evident discomfiture, but too tired to think much on it. She slipped into her hammock, and was asleep a moment later.

Archie watched in satisfaction as Polwheal gently chivvied the captain first into dry clothes and then into his hammock chair, tucked the boat cloak around him, and provided him with a supper of biscuit and rum. He made a great show of watching the repairs which were still going on on deck and of seeing absolutely nothing that was going on behind him, however, and was rewarded in a few minutes with the soft sounds of snoring from the taffrail.

Archie took the first watch, sending Gerard below as soon as both port and starboard batteries were ready for battle again, and smiling to himself slightly at the similarity to Horatio. The difference being, of course, that Archie had no intention of remaining on deck all night himself. Bush appeared at midnight as though by magic to relieve him, and Archie went gratefully to bed.

It was not yet two bells in the middle watch when the wind began to shift to the south and moderate, though the _Lydia's_ motion grew more violent, not less, owing to the waves growing steeper. The change woke Hornblower, as Bush had known that it would. He reported the change to his captain, and could not help grumbling about the darkness as he did so; the _Natividad_ might have been two hundred yards to leeward of them and they'd never have known it. But there was nothing to be done about that, and he and Hornblower both knew it, so Hornblower, after a few minutes of desultory conversation which did not quite hide his nervousness, went back to his hammock chair with an affectation of indifference that made Bush grin into the darkness. 

The darkness did not even begin to lift until eight bells were struck and Gerard made his appearance to take over the watch. Then Hornblower roused himself, and gave the order to make sail. Bush could see the worry in his face as he did so, and wondered how Hornblower had chosen his course and what they would find when the dawn broke. But he, like Kennedy, was a practical soul and not about to refuse a chance to go back to sleep. Gerard was not quite as reliable as Kennedy, but really there was nothing to be done that he could not do at present. Bush went below.

He woke again, however, at three bells into the morning watch. It would be dawn soon, and they would either find the _Natividad,_ or — not. He dressed himself and went on deck, and stood beside Hornblower at the taffrail as they watched the sun slowly heave itself over the horizon. The whole ship felt tense with anticipation. Had Hornblower pulled off yet another miracle, and laid a course that would put them within sight of their enemy at dawn, or had he guessed wrong? Even Bush would not have laid money either way. 

Then the lookout sang out from the masthead. "Sail ho!"

Bush restrained himself from cheering. Their quarry was in sight. Now there was no more doubt in his mind as to the outcome of this engagement. He took out his telescope, and found the _Natividad_ soon enough, ten miles dead ahead of them, with the main topmast taken down and lashed to the stump of her foremast and a royal yard set in its place, and the most unseamanlike collection of jibs and foresails and spritsails badly set all over this jury rig. "Like old Mother Brown's washing on the line!" he said. Hornblower huffed a brief laugh but made no other comment as he sought out the _Natividad_ with his own glass.

"Making a stern chase of it," said Gerard. "Had enough yesterday, I fancy." 

Hornblower shook his head ever so slightly, looking grim, but made no other comment, and Bush and Gerard remained silent in deference to him until Polwheal appeared, bringing breakfast for all three of them and Lady Barbara's wishes of good luck to Hornblower in the coming engagement, together with her request that she be permitted to remain in the orlop rather than return to the cable tier when the battle started. Hornblower seized upon the steaming coffee like a man dying of thirst, and only when he had drunk half of it at a swallow did he give his grudging acquiescence to Lady Barbara's request, and then remember that he was supposed to be imperturbable and stoic and proceed to sip the remainder of his coffee with conscious slowness and dignity.

It was after they had finished breakfast that the wind began to die down. Wetting the sails bought them perhaps half an hour's progress, while the _Natividad,_ with her unhandy rig, boxed the compass, to Bush's great satisfaction. Then the wind rose, and for a while hopes ran high aboard the _Lydia,_ for they all knew that she was the better sailor of the two ships, and had been repaired better to boot. Then it left the _Lydia_ again, carried the _Natividad_ a mile and a half out of range of even the _Lydia's_ longest guns, and died for good.

When Hornblower gave the order to put out the launch and cutter and take the _Lydia_ under tow, Bush looked doubtfully at him at first. Two could play at that game, after all. But he understood almost at once that the _Lydia_ with her graceful lines would doubtless be easier to tow than the stumpy _Natividad,_ and there was the possibility, too, that all the _Natividad's_ boats had gone the way of the _Lydia's_ jolly boat, smashed the previous day.

An hour of towing, a labour as hard as any in the service, brought them nearer to the _Natividad_ by a degree noticeable only through the use of a sextant and a calculation of subtended angles which tried Bush's mathematical skills to the hilt. His calculations agreed with Hornblower's, however, and so he believed them. A more concrete proof of their progress came when Knyvett, still stationed in the foretop with a glass, shouted down that the _Natividad_ was hoisting out a boat, a measly twelve-oared one, apparently to take the unwieldy ship in tow. "And they're welcome," Bush scoffed. "Twelve oars won't move that old tub of a _Natividad_ very far."

"Don't tempt fate, Mr. Bush," Hornblower said reprovingly, but a smile was tugging at the corners of his mouth and Bush knew he privately agreed with the sentiment.

Soon, another, less pleasant, consequence of their closing with the _Natividad_ made itself known, in the form of 18-pound shot from her stern-chasers. Hornblower summoned Marsh, the gunner, from the magazine, and set him to work with the long nine-pounder on the fo'c'sle, of which Bush approved heartily, though there was little chance of striking the _Natividad_ at this range.

One of the _Natividad's_ shot struck the quarterdeck, and the first thing Bush saw was that Hornblower was stumbling back. The shot could not have struck him, for Bush could see no great wound, but it had thrown up splinters in its passage. Bush sprang across the quarterdeck and took his captain by the shoulders instinctively, steadying the slighter man as he reeled. "Are you hurt, sir?" he asked anxiously.

"No, no, I'm all right," Hornblower said, absently freeing himself from Bush's grip, hands already reaching for his glass again.

Then he said, "Damn," and offered Bush the glass.

Taking it, Bush saw that the boat that had been ineffectually attempting to tow the _Natividad_ was now instead bringing her head round so that her full broadside would bear on the _Lydia._ "Damn," Bush agreed, with feeling.

"Well," Hornblower said, steeling himself, "Nothing for it."

He walked for'ard to the gangway with an air of carefree confidence which Bush only knew to be assumed because of his long knowledge of Hornblower, and said blithely, "They're waiting for us now, lads. We shall have some pebbles about our ears before long. Let's show 'em that Englishmen don't care."

As usual, Hornblower had struck the right note to bring the crew's spirits up, and they cheered him heartily. Even those who were still straining at the oars put what breath they had into a huzzah.

Then there was nothing to do except wait, and endure the _Natividad's_ fire. Crystal said pensively, "At this range, now, how many shots do you reckon are likely to strike us?" 

Bush performed a brief mental calculation. "With a crew of Dago lubbers like that? I'd say none at first, unless the captain goes round to train the guns himself."

Kennedy, not needed at the moment with the guns, had sensed conversation and came aft to join them just as Crystal said, "Aye, but they're firing a full broadside and the range is only going to close. There's a fifty-yard variance in the fall of a ball at this distance; say one of the better gun crews hits by skill and one by chance."

"You think this Crespo would leave a green crew to lay their own guns at this range?" Bush asked. "They'd never hit us. If _Natividad_ lands a single shot on us it'll be because he laid the guns himself."

"This crew has been at sea for nearly twenty years, you know, Mr. Bush," Archie said, eyes twinkling.

The _Natividad_ disappeared briefly into a fog of her own making before anyone could answer, and a few moments later her broadside tore through the air and sea around the _Lydia_. But no more than two shots had struck, and Bush could not help pointing it out even though it went more to support Crystal's case than his own.

"Just what I said." Crystal gave him a self-satisfied smile. "That captain of theirs ought to go round and train every gun himself. Clearly they have not spent those twenty years at gun practice, Mr. Kennedy."

Bush found himself agreeing with Crystal rather against his will, at least on part of his opinion. The rest, however, he objected to. "How do you know he did not?"

Marsh chose that moment to fire the nine-pounder bow chaser, and the conversation was necessarily paused. "Well aimed, Mr. Marsh!" Hornblower called. "You hit him squarely."

The _Natividad_ answered their hit with a broadside and the argument had to be suspended again, for Bush had work to do in keeping the main deck clear and Kennedy had to keep the gun crews at their work; under this continual pounding they were beginning to grow sullen.

"It is obvious to anyone with a mathematical turn of mind," Crystal said stuffily when Bush returned to the quarterdeck, Archie remaining behind to keep a closer eye on the gun crews, "that these guns are all laid by different hands. The shots are too scattered for it to be otherwise."

"Nonsense!" Bush maintained. "See how long it is between broadsides. Time enough for one man to train each gun. What would they be doing in that time otherwise?"

"A Dago crew — " Crystal began, but the _Natividad's_ broadside went shrieking overhead again and silenced him, and Bush grinned.

That broadside went high, and Bush, looking up, noted that some of the rigging had parted. "Mr. Galbraith!" he shouted. "Have that main t'gallant stay spliced directly." Then he turned triumphantly back to Crystal. "Did you notice how every shot of that broadside went high? How does the mathematical mind explain that?"

"They fired on the upward roll, Mr. Bush," said Crystal, sounding slightly exasperated at Bush's refusal to concede his point. Crystal was easily goaded into irritation, as Kennedy had been the first to discover, and often the results were deeply amusing. "Really, Mr. Bush, I think that after Trafalgar — "

"And what has Trafalgar got to do with that? Those shot all went by at the same elevation. The upward roll doesn't explain that."

Hornblower had been standing near enough to hear them for the entire debate, but had not deigned to join in. Now he spoke for the first time. "Mr. Bush, at what distance do you think she is now?"

Bush took a measurement with his eye. "Three parts of a mile, I should say, sir," he answered.

"Two thirds, more likely, sir," Crystal put in.

Hornblower turned to scowl a little at Crystal, who shut his mouth again promptly, remembering that Hornblower was not fond of unsolicited opinions. Half the _Lydia's_ armament being made up of carronades, at this distance there was nothing for it but to keep on towing forward, enduring the _Natividad's_ fire, and hoping Marsh could do some good with the nine-pounder. Bush strode forward to order relief for the men at the oars.

When he returned he found Hornblower in the midst of ordering a contest between the three men who were said to dance the best hornpipes aboard the ship, with a guinea as the prize. The sullen gun crews were already beginning to grin at each other again as Sullivan struck up a merry tune by the mast, and Benskin, Hall, and MacEvoy began to dance. Bush gave Hornblower a quick smile, knowing that that had been exactly why he ordered the contest, and had the pleasure of seeing it returned before the _Natividad's_ broadside rang out yet again, and Hornblower, seeing where one of the shot had come in through a gunport and struck down two of the starboard gun crew, went pale under his tan. Twenty years' service in the Navy had never quite made him inured to death and suffering, and Bush both pitied and admired him for his quick sympathy, engendered by the vivid imagination that Hornblower had once admitted often pictured his own self suffering the same fate as those he saw, and yet enabled him to track the movements of an enemy over the open sea like a hound on a scent, with nary a clue to guide him save his judgement of his enemy's mind.

And so the afternoon went on, with Marsh banging away at the nine-pounder, hitting his mark as often as not now, and Sullivan scraping away at his fiddle like a madman, and three men dancing hornpipes on the deck as others toiled away at the oars in the launch and cutter. Later in the afternoon there came a crash from for'ard when Bush had seen no damage to the _Lydia_ herself, and Galbraith hailed from the foretop to say that the launch had been sunk. Hornblower sprang into rapid motion the instant the words were spoken, and crossed the _Lydia's_ deck with a startling turn of speed. But when he spoke, looking over the side at the remnants of one of the _Lydia's_ two remaining boats and the frantic men scrambling up the side, he sounded almost lighthearted. "The Dagoes have saved us the trouble of hoisting her in," he said, loudly enough to be heard by all. "We're close enough now for them to feel our teeth."

The men cheered, and Bush nearly joined them, and did allow himself a fierce smile, for they were indeed in range at last. It was trying to the patience to be struck at when one could not properly strike back. Bush did not count Marsh's efforts with the nine-pounder for much, though they had been far better than nothing; they could have done precious little damage to the _Natividad,_ other than in morale, and from what he had seen of El Supremo and his officers Bush did not doubt Crespo's ability to keep his crew working regardless of their morale.

Hornblower was calling down to Wellard, in the cutter, to starboard his helm. Kennedy and Gerard were crouched by the starboard guns, tense with excitement, waiting for the first moment when their batteries would bear. Then Kennedy gave the word to fire, and at once the glorious thunder of the guns began — a single deafening peal, the shots indistinguishable from each other, so well were the crews listening to his commands.

Hornblower was grinning, the strain of the long wait forgotten, as he shouted, "Give him another, lads!"

Soon both the ships were swallowed up in a cloud of smoke which all but blotted out the sun. The _Natividad_ was scarcely visible save for the flashes of fire which could be seen when she fired her guns. Bush counted two of her broadsides to the _Lydia's_ five and exulted. Now the superior discipline of the British crew was telling, and Crespo's advantage in firepower was not enough to make up for it.

Hornblower loomed up out of the smoke, coughing a little at the thickness of it, just as Bush noticed something else about the _Natividad._ " _Natividad's_ feeling our fire, sir!" he shouted to make himself heard over the incessant noise. "She's firing very wild. Look at that, sir!"

Only a one or two shots from the _Natividad's_ last broadside had struck home — she was doing no more damage to them now that she had done when they were at a mile's distance. Hornblower nodded, still grinning, though he remained silent rather than try to shout over the incredible noise of the battle.

On and on the battle went, minutes stretching into hours, though Bush would never have known it if he had not dutifully been keeping half an eye on the sandglass by the binnacle, and never for a moment did the _Lydia's_ ruthless pounding of the _Natividad_ slacken or slow. Not since Trafalgar had Bush seen an action to match this, and he rejoiced in the very powder-smoke that choked him, for it was just one more sign of the crew's diligence and skill in keeping up continuous fire for so long. But the _Natividad,_ though firing wildly and doing far less damage than she had the previous day, was keeping up a steady rate of fire. Bush fanned ineffectually at the smoke with his hand, wishing now that it were lighter so that he could see what on earth was going on aboard the Spanish ship. "One hour and a half already, sir," he said to Hornblower, who was on the quarterdeck again after having disappeared into the smoke for an interval. "Glorious, sir, glorious. I've never known Dagoes stick to their guns like this before," he added a moment later. "Their aim's poor, but they're firing as fast as ever. And it's my belief that we've hit them hard, sir."

As he spoke, Crystal appeared to inform them that he thought the wind was coming up, and Bush found himself glad for once of the old fool's presence, for he proved to be right. The smoke rolled away before the rising breeze, and revealed to them that the _Natividad_ had taken even more damage than Bush could have hoped. More, almost, than he would have wished. "She's low in the water," he observed, and wondered if Crespo would strike his colours now that the smoke had cleared. 

No sane captain would continue fighting with nothing but his mizzen-mast standing, and no hands spared to cut away the tangle of canvas and rope that was trailing to her disengaged side. But even as he wondered, fresh smoke belched forth from the _Natividad's_ battered gunports, and crashes and screams from below told them that most if not all the shots had told on the _Lydia,_ by some chance. But the _Lydia_ had steerage way again, and Hornblower was ordering the cutter cast off. They turned across the _Natividad's_ bows, and the thunder and fire of the _Lydia's_ broadside spoke yet again, but Bush could find less pleasure in it now. This was beginning to feel less like war and more like butchery, yet as long as the blue flag with its yellow star flew from the _Natividad's_ battered mizzen mast, the battle must go on. Astern, the sun was setting. "She must strike soon. Christ! Why don't she strike?" he asked.

Hornblower shook his head. "She won't," he said. "She's not a Spanish ship, Mr. Bush, she's El Supremo's ship. Crespo will never strike his colours."

"Pound her, lads, pound her!" Gerard cried from for'ard.

The _Natividad's_ bowsprit was splintered and hanging down under her forefoot, and as they watched through the growing darkness, the mizzen mast fell as well. She was utterly helpless — save for her guns. "She must strike now, by God!" Bush protested, remembering his own stint as captain of a Spanish prize after Trafalgar, the dismounted guns lying ineffectually at their ports, the dead and wounded lying in heaps together by the mast: pain, misery, helplessness.

And yet, as though to answer him, there came a flash from the _Natividad's_ bows, and the report of a cannon. Some mad fools must have slewed a gun round with tackles and handspikes so that it would bear right for'ard. "Pound him, lads, pound him!" Gerard screamed, half mad with fatigue and strain.

The wind was carrying the _Lydia,_ with her top hamper, to leeward of the _Natividad,_ though it was dark enough and the wind uncertain enough that Bush could not judge quite how close they were to the other ship. In the flashes of the guns they could see forms running back and forth on the _Natividad's_ deck, and then higher reports began to ring out in the darkness, with smaller flashes — they were firing muskets. "Damned fools!" came Kennedy's voice from somewhere for'ard. "Can't they see it's over?"

A musket ball thudded into a rail beside Hornblower, and somehow the petty defiance of it drove Bush mad. He no longer cared if it was an equal battle or not. The _Natividad_ would never sail again, would never make a friendly port for repairs — would probably sink before the morning — and yet here were her captain and her men trying, not to repair their ship, not to save a single life, but to drag the _Lydia_ and her captain down with them. Hornblower, shoulders drooping in his exhaustion, hardly heeded the spent bullet, but he had heeded Archie's voice. "Not quite over, Mr. Kennedy," he said, peering towards the _Natividad_ through the darkness. "All hands to repel boarders! Call all hands!"

The two starboard quarterdeck carronades were loaded with canister, and the men of the _Lydia_ braced themselves, but it was still a little unexpected when the _Natividad's_ bows struck them amidships, and the night was full of yells as though there were fiends, not men, waiting to board them. "Wait!" cried Hornblower as the captains of the carronades reached for their lanyards. 

The _Lydia_ was slowly swinging round under the force of the impact. Hornblower himself threw his weight onto one of the gun tackles to train it for'ard. Bush followed his example with the other, until both guns were aimed as Hornblower wanted. The mob on the _Natividad's_ forecastle surged forward, and then Bush knew in his bones that the guns were aimed true. "Fire!" Hornblower shouted, and a thousand musket balls swept the _Natividad's_ deck clear.

Moaning and wailing replaced the wild shouting of before, but a stern rage was on Bush since that musket ball, and he had no pity to spare for the enemy. The two ships clung together for a space, and Gerard, in the absence of further orders, continued pounding away with the _Lydia's_ guns, while the _Natividad_ was utterly dark and silent. "Cease firing," Hornblower said in a hoarse croak, swaying a little in his exhaustion, and Bush fought off the temptation to put an arm around his shoulders to hold him up.

"Surrender!" Hornblower shouted towards the _Natividad_.

"Never!" shrieked a voice in answer, thin and high-pitched, and it added a few words in Spanish that Bush guessed to be oaths.

"My God," Hornblower murmured in shock. "Crespo." 

But he smiled at the insult all the same, a moment later. Bush could not: it was all one with the stupid, destructive cruelty that had enraged him so in the last hour of the battle. "You have done all that brave men could do," Hornblower said.

"Not all, yet, Captain," the voice wailed, thin and disembodied in the darkness.

Then a red light became apparent in the darkness, and Hornblower and Bush guessed its source at the same time. "Crespo, you fool!" Hornblower shouted. "Your ship's on fire! Surrender, while you can."

"Never!" 

Kennedy had joined them aft now that the guns had stopped, and he gave a curious shudder at that last cry. "Like a damned soul in the Pit," he said softly.

Bush was torn between clapping Archie's shoulder in support, for he was obviously worn out and overwrought, and giving him a good clout to the head for saying something like that in front of the captain at a time like this. "The wads from the guns must have got into the _Natividad's_ timbers," Hornblower said quietly, with just the slightest tremor in his voice. "It'll be hell on board soon enough, and we must get free of her before that happens. Man the braces, there!" he shouted.

The _Lydia_ clawed upwind, close-hauled, as all the hands who had nothing to attend to peered aft, and the flames spread over the _Natividad,_ reflecting redly in the water around her. Bush could not get Kennedy's words out of his mind, or that last wailing "Never" of Crespo's. Then the fire disappeared, like a snuffed candle. "Sunk, by God!" was all he could find to say.

Hornblower had the ship put about, and ran out the cutter to look for survivors. There were a bare seven of them in the end, standing sullen and silent on the _Lydia's_ deck. Hornblower was swaying in his weariness, but he still tried to find a little humour in the situation. "We'll make topmen of them yet, Mr. Harrison," he said to the bosun.

"Aye aye, sir," Harrison replied phlegmatically; like any bosun he had long experience of making men of all kinds into proper sailors, and these would probably cause him less trouble than some he had worked with in the past.

"What course shall I set, sir?" Bush asked, as Harrison took their rescues below.

"Course?" Hornblower asked, vaguely. "Course?"

He blinked at Bush in the binnacle lamp like he had never seen him before, and looked around slowly at all the people who, to Bush's rising irritation, were standing around like idiots on the quarterdeck, waiting for the captain's orders. Then he slowly made his way below to his cabin, Bush hoped to find charts. "Kennedy," he said, to make sure.

Kennedy blinked at him too, looking confused and nearly as weary as the captain, until Bush said softly, "Send Polwheal up here. Have him bring the hammock chair back if it's still in one piece, and the captain's cloak. Some food too, if he can find it. Then get some rest. You're done in and no mistake."

Kennedy vanished down the companionway, only stumbling once on the shot-furrowed deck. Then Bush rounded on the collection of half-wits on the quarterdeck. Well, Marsh was not a half-wit, nor was Howell the carpenter, nor Harrison, but Laurie was, and Bush was too tired to bother to be fair in his insults. Bush wished that McRae were the one he had to deal with, but he was doubtless below with the wounded, as he was at least a somewhat useful acting surgeon. Laurie was thus the first target for Bush's ire. "Laurie, you damn fool, get below and be useful! Read a book if you have to, or listen to McRae, but don't bother the captain."

Laurie fled at once. "Mr. Howell," Bush said. "What is it?"

"Six feet in the well, sir, and the pumps only just keeping up. I've found three new holes already, and I'll wager there are more than that, in this dark."

"You can have the men from the port side gun crews," Bush said at once. The port crews had been mostly sent to other posts during the battle, but the two men who had been left to each gun were as near to being fresh as anyone in the ship was at present. "Get some of them to fother a sail, if there's one left to be had. Close up those three holes and find any others. Put the rest on the pumps."

"Aye aye, sir," said Howell.

"Mr. Harrison?"

By the time Hornblower came back on deck to inform Bush that they would make for Panama, Bush had given all the orders that needed to be given immediately. Polwheal appeared a moment after the captain, with superb timing, and slung the hammock chair once more. Bush guided his captain to the rail with a gentle hand on his elbow, and Hornblower fell half fainting into the chair. Polwheal had brought a plate of biscuit and a cup of water, too, but Hornblower ignored that — he was all but asleep already — and Bush ate the biscuit himself without remorse. His work was only beginning. He was tired, certainly, but it would be hours yet before he was too tired to carry out his duties, and there was much to do aboard the _Lydia_ that would not wait.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So. Did I do justice to Forester's epic scene? Did I do a horrible job? Let me know in the comments! They feed the muse, you know. ;-)


	5. Half So Melancholy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Nothing except a battle lost is half so melancholy as a battle won._  
>  \- Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington
> 
> The _Lydia_ and her crew deal with the aftermath of their battle with the _Natividad,_ and try to keep the ship afloat and the wounded alive long enough to reach a friendly port. Unfortunately, the nearest one of those may be further off than they know.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So...uh...this has grown another chapter, I think, as my stuff usually does. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

Barbara hurried up to the quarterdeck in the faint light of the moon, thinking of nothing except the necessity of escaping, at least for a few minutes, the dank, slimy cable tier and the horrible sounds that filtered through from the surgeon's cockpit with its improvised operating table. The deck of the _Lydia_ was a well-ordered hive of confusion, like an anthill that had been stirred with a stick, if ants had stentorian voices and shouted about guns. She laughed a little at the strange simile and checked herself lest it turn to hysteria. 

She picked her way through the chaos as best she could, keeping out of the way of the toiling men, until she reached the comparative safety of the taffrail. Here too reminders of the recent battle were everywhere, in the dark stains that marred the white planking, in the splintered boards that still sometimes held the shot that had damaged them, and in the line of silent forms, shrouded in hammocks, that lay to one side of the deck below in an oasis of quiet and stillness. But there was also already a noticeable difference between the state of the _Lydia_ now and what she remembered of the deck when she had come out from the cable tier to ask Captain Hornblower if she and Hebe might retire to his cabin instead of the cable tier. The damage to the ship was being repaired at an astonishing rate. Much of the wreckage had already been cleared away, and as she watched two of the starboard guns were lifted back onto their repaired carriages to sweep the seas again.

She looked around to find Captain Hornblower, who she expected instinctively to be standing at the epicentre of the chaos, directing repairs. She found him lying asleep in a hammock chair, oblivious to the thudding and shouting and chaos of the deck. The terrible stress he had been under for the past two days was written for all to see in his drawn face and the dark circles under his eyes, and she felt a pang of guilt for forgetting so quickly how close he had been to the breaking-point when she ventured out onto the deck during the long lull in the battle. He looked both exhausted beyond words and strangely young, lying there like that, and something that was sharp like pity, but was not pity, welled up in her breast at the sight. She felt an inexplicable desire to tuck the boat cloak closer around his lean form, to do at least something to ease the lines of strain that were graven on his face even in sleep.

 _But then who…_ she had begun to wonder, when a step sounded by her elbow, and she turned to see the towering form of Lieutenant Bush. He had evidently found his cocked hat, but the bandage around his brow still gave him a rather savage look, and his face and uniform were stained with blood once more. His face was grey and strangely old in the moonlight, and there were dark smudges under his eyes, but the line of his shoulders was unbowed. His had been the harsh, powerful voice she had heard directing the chaos, she realised. Now he softened it to speak to her, and looked a little surprised at the sound it made when he was not shouting. "Your ladyship," he said hoarsely. "You should be below."

"I'm sorry, Mr. Bush," she said, looking up to meet his eyes, and knowing that hers must look rather wild. "But I had to come on deck for a little. I had to get away from...from down there."

Those incongruously blue eyes softened in understanding. "Your first battle, ma'am?" he asked, and in these surroundings, from this man who must have seen scores of such actions, the question did not seem a strange one.

"Yes, Mr. Bush," she said, grateful both for the understanding and for the conversation which was slowly steadying her jangled nerves.

"It catches most men like that too, the first time or two."

Barbara wondered if Bush had ever been young and frightened of battle. Looking at him now, a pillar of strength in the chaos despite his clear weariness, she could not imagine it. Hornblower, on the other hand...her imagination called up a picture of a young Horatio in a midshipman's coat, all wide brown eyes and long limbs, staring out over the sea at the sinking _Natividad,_ or looking out over a deck covered with the dead and wounded, or, horribly, lying among them. She shuddered.

"I think I'd be better off with something to do other than sit down there in the cold and the dark and listen to the..." She trailed off, unwilling to give voice to her thought. "Isn't there anything I can do to help?" she asked, turning from the sea to face Bush again.

Bush frowned, but before he could answer, his attention was diverted by the appearance of Longley, whom he hailed with apparent relief. "What is it, Mr. Longley?" he barked.

"Laurie sent again to ask the captain what he ought to do about the wounded, sir."

Bush voiced Barbara's own thought (albeit in rougher terms than she had thought it) with a scowl. "Why the devil should he ask the captain?"

"He hadn't had much training before Hankey died, sir," Longley answered. "He can manage well enough with the simple things, but splinters and amputations…"

"All right, Mr. Longley," Bush cut him off hurriedly, with a glance in her direction. "Tell him to help those he can — at least he can bandage them and stop the bleeding — and give laudanum to those he can't. That's all the captain will tell him, and there's no call to go waking him yet just to worry him over what can't be helped."

"Aye aye, sir."

In the midst of her renewed horror at the idea of an untrained man being in charge of the cockpit, Barbara could spare a thought to smile at Bush's evident care for his captain. Then she had an idea, one that she turned from at first in disgust, but then returned to on second thought. "I could help there," she said. "That's not a matter of strength. Only of...of bearing it."

Bush stared at her for a moment as though she had grown a second head, then set a large, rough hand on her arm, concern writ large on his honest face, before he recalled himself and withdrew it hurriedly. She was rather touched by the earnestness of the gesture. "Your ladyship," he said haltingly, "it's no place for a woman down there. You'd be in the middle of…of all that you were hearing in the cable tier. I've known men who couldn't stand the cockpit and never held it to their shame."

"I'll hear it no matter where I am when I go below again," she said, and knew it for the truth. "At least if I help I'll know I'm doing something to ease all that pain. Please, Mr. Bush."

Bush looked uncomfortable, but said, "I can't stop you if you go down there, ma'am. I'll tell the surgeon's mate to take your orders if you like. But I'd never ask you to do it."

His uncertainty reassured her, somehow. "And you're not asking me, Mr. Bush," she said. "I shall go down directly."

"All right, ma'am," he said reluctantly. "Mr. Longley!" he bellowed, and she was abruptly reminded that he could shake the decks with his voice when he wanted to. "Tell the surgeon's mate he's to take her Ladyship's orders as though they were mine, understood?"

Longley looked confused for a moment, but all he said was, "Aye aye, sir!"

"And get her a jacket, or an apron, or something. If you're to be down there in the middle of all that mess you ought to have something over that dress of yours," he added by way of explanation, softening his voice again.

"That's very thoughtful of you, Mr. Bush," she said, and smiled at him, feeling sure that if she thanked him for his consideration more openly it would only embarrass him. 

Then she followed Longley towards the companionway, and one of the most unpleasant tasks she had ever forced herself to carry out. But the thought of Bush driving himself beyond all reasonable endurance on the deck above to make the ship ready again made her scorn her own fear. There was work to be done, and the King's service would be better off if it were done well. She was the only one who could do it, and so she would. She put on the borrowed midshipman's jacket that Longley brought her, and stepped into the cockpit.

Archie woke all at once, as was his habit, and felt at once that he had overslept terribly. He was still in all his clothes from the battle, with the exception of his coat and boots, which he had had just enough sense left to kick off before going to bed, and took a few minutes to pay lip service to the idea of washing his face and to find his spare uniform coat before dashing on deck. He did his best not to wake Gerard, who shared his tiny cabin, but he need not have bothered: the younger lieutenant was sleeping like the dead, though the simile made Archie wince and he banished it from his mind as he climbed up the ladder. 

They were still on course for Panama, too, though close-hauled: the breeze must have backed round for the night. The sun was already up over the horizon, its golden rays gilding the _Lydia's_ battered rigging and casting long dark shadows over the deck. He could see at once that a tremendous amount of work had been done. The dead were laid out in a neat row along the lee side gangway, out of the way of the crew. Archie counted twenty-four. The guns had been secured, the rigging spliced, and canvas spread over all the shot-holes that he could see. The worst of the stains on deck had even been swabbed. With a fresh crew, the _Lydia_ could have fought another battle at two minutes' notice.

The crew must have worked all through the night to accomplish such a thing, but now there could be no more than perhaps a dozen waking men on deck, all told, the bare minimum that would allow the _Lydia_ to be held on her present course. All the rest were asleep in a jumble of limbs on the deck. Only one or two had had the strength to sling their hammocks, if those had survived the battle. The rest slept with their heads pillowed on each other, or on less sympathetic objects like ring bolts and the hind axletrees of guns. Archie could not blame them. The previous day's work had been as gruelling an action as he had ever known, and even worse for the men than the officers.

Speaking of officers, Archie looked about to see who had the watch, and cursed himself for a lazy sod when he saw that it was still Bush, who must have been up for at least twenty-four hours now, unless Hornblower, who was still slumped in the hammock chair by the taffrail, had woken to take one of the night watches.

The sun had come up far enough now that its rays were catching Hornblower full in the face, and Archie watched in amusement as he woke halfway and tried to shield his face with his hands for a minute or so before coming more fully awake and stiffly prying himself out of the chair. He looked around at the ship much as Archie had done upon emerging from the companionway, and doubtless noticed much the same things. Last of all his eye lighted on the weary figure of Bush, still standing by the wheel, aware of his captain's wakefulness but, by the immemorial custom of the _Lydia,_ ignoring his presence until he should choose to speak.

Archie climbed up to the quarterdeck in time to hear, "...on earth did you do all this in one night, William?"

"Today is Sunday, sir," Bush said simply, and Archie nearly laughed out loud.

Sunday was the day of the captain's inspection, when it was the responsibility of the first lieutenant to show his fitness for his post by having the ship swept and garnished in preparation for the reading of divine service and the Articles of War. Stepping up onto the quarterdeck, Archie met Hornblower's eyes and saw the same smile on his friend's face. "Sunday or no Sunday, you have done magnificently, Mr. Bush."

"Thank you, sir."

"You know I'll say so in my report as well, of course," Hornblower added diffidently.

Horatio was odd about both promotions and compliments, and alluded only indirectly to the fact that it was as likely as not for Bush to be promoted to commander after a successful single-ship action such as this, but Bush knew quite well what he was talking about, and a smile lit up his weary face. "I know you'll do that, sir," he said, and no more, for if he expressed gratitude at a moment when they were all still weary after the battle, Hornblower would probably "ha-hm" and close off entirely again for the rest of the day.

Then Archie's attempts at telepathy at last began to pay off, as Hornblower looked searchingly at Bush, and said, "Good lord, man, you haven't been on deck since the action began?"

"Aye, sir."

"You've been up all night!" 

Archie cheered silently.

"I'll be fit until Gerard comes to relieve me," Bush said stoutly.

"Actually it's my watch," Archie said firmly. "I've overslept, and I'm sorry, William."

Bush looked uncertain as to what to do with the apology. Archie wondered how he was cudgelling his tired brain into working at all by this time. Hornblower stepped in to rescue the slightly awkward silence. "Your relief is here, Mr. Bush," he said. "Go on below. God knows you've earned some rest."

That might be taken as a suggestion or an order. To Archie's relief, whichever Bush thought it was, he obeyed, with an "Aye aye, sir."

Just as he was stepping onto the ladder he paused and dug a scrap of paper out of his pocket. "Nearly forgot, sir," he said. "But you ought to have the list of wounded."

Archie took it and only just resisted the impulse to give Bush a light shove back down towards the ladder; he looked like it might knock him over if he did. Fortunately he made his way below without further protest. Archie heaved a sigh of relief, and took up his position by the wheel.

"Might as well take a look at the butcher's bill now," Hornblower said grimly.

Archie read over the names of the thirty-eight killed, four missing, and seventy-five wounded in a quiet voice. Some he had already known of. Young Clay he had seen dead on the deck in front of him when the mizzen mast fell. Simmonds, the marine lieutenant, had been struck by a splinter on the quarterdeck shortly thereafter; Archie had seen his men helping him to the cockpit as he was resetting the sails. Galbraith had been on the gundeck when a ball smashed both his legs badly below the knee, and Archie himself had helped carry him below. At the end of the list, Hornblower steeled himself and dove below to go and visit the wounded before his determination could waver. Archie ordered relief for the men at the pumps and waited.

Barbara, with McRae's assistance, was carefully stitching up the incision through which they had removed a wooden splinter that had struck one of the seamen in the breast and then, deflected by the ribs, eventually lodged by his armpit. Laurie, she had quickly learned, knew more of the theory of medicine, but was mostly useless in practice. He was trailing them down the line of wounded men, occasionally making clumsy attempts to help. In the end she had pushed his hands away and, with Lieutenant Bush's authority behind her, ordered him to keep away from the wounded except when she or McRae was with him.

She was just tying off the bandages when a quick, purposeful tread on the companionway announced the arrival, a few moments later, of Captain Hornblower. Laurie darted to the door and seized on him with a relieved, "Thank God you've come, sir."

Laurie had never quite been reconciled to her presence in the cockpit, even by Longley's affirmations that he was to obey her, on Mr. Bush's orders. Barbara could not quite blame him for it, however; it was far too small an offence compared to his utter incompetence to merit her notice. Now he was leading Hornblower towards her, as she moved to the next injured man in the long row stretched on the deck, McRae ready beside her with instruments and bandages. She wondered if it was a trick of the wavering light in the cockpit that made Hornblower's face so pale. A moment later he addressed her in a harsh voice. "Don't do that! Go away from here. Go on deck."

If he had not been so obviously horrified — she could see him clearly enough now to know that his pallor was no trick of the light — she would have resented his preemptive tone. As it was, she simply answered, "I have begun this work now. I am not going to leave it unfinished. The gentleman in charge here knows nothing of his duties."

Though clearly both disgusted and frightened by what lay before him, Hornblower joined her and McRae on their slow circuit round the cockpit, and his presence managed to transform Laurie into a nearly useful ally, for which she was grateful. As the work went on, Hornblower deferred to her more and more readily, and seemed also to grow less unhappy, perhaps seeing that there was really someone competent aboard to look after the wounded. When they had visited every bed, and the four newly dead men had been carried out to join the long line on the gangway, he turned to face her under the light of the nearest lamp, and something seemed to have softened in his brown eyes as he looked at her. "I don't know how I can thank you, ma'am," he said. "I am as grateful to you as any of these wounded men."

Barbara thought of Kennedy, covered in powder-smoke and sweat, saving her and Hebe by inches from a loose cannon; of Bush, grey-faced and exhausted, yet standing to his post while the rest of the officers slept; of Hornblower himself, standing on the quarterdeck in a drenched, torn and bloodstained uniform, half-hysterical under the terrible strain of the battle, yet refusing to go below until the enemy was defeated. "There is no gratitude needed," she said, with a slight shrug of her shoulders, "for work which had to be done."

One of the wounded men nearby called out, "Three cheers for her leddyship!" and was echoed by as many as were within earshot.

Barbara made a desultory gesture; it was faintly embarrassing to be cheered for doing the work that had, for the sake of humanity, to be done. But the cheering brought another train of thought to mind, and she said, "We must have air down here. Can that be arranged? I remember my brother telling me how the mortality in the hospital at Bombay declined as soon as they began to give the patients air. Perhaps those men who can be moved can be brought on deck?"

"I will arrange it, ma'am," said Hornblower, looking immensely relieved at having something to do.

Horatio came back on deck wearing a rather relieved expression, and Archie wondered what on earth he could have found in the cockpit to make him wear it. His first order to Gerard, awake and on deck now, explained matters. "Put back the ventilating shafts to the orlop deck, Mr. Gerard," he said, "and there are certain of the wounded who would do better if brought up on deck. You must find Lady Barbara Wellesley and ask her which men are to be moved."

Gerard's face said clearer than any words that he would very much have liked to ask why he was to consult Lady Barbara, of all people, upon that matter, but he was too well-trained an officer to ask. The appealing look he cast at his captain's back produced no response; Horatio only continued his walk towards the quarterdeck, and Gerard went below with a resigned expression to see to his duties. 

Shortly afterwards, Hornblower went below, and produced from his cabin adjoining the gunroom (which had not been ravaged by shot, in an unexpected silver lining) a very battered common-prayer book, and divine service was held, after the burial of the dead, with rows of wounded men in hammocks slung on deck. Bush slept through it all, Archie was pleased to notice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is a bonus scene for this chapter [here on my Tumblr](https://winterinhimring.tumblr.com/post/645333969457594368/satisfied-in-the-knowledge-that-his-captain-was), by the way: I couldn't decide if I wanted to tell the first section from Bush's POV or from Barbara's, so I wrote both. I wound up with Barbara's here, but decided to post the other too.


	6. A Lee Shore

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The _Lydia_ has survived her battle with the _Natividad,_ but there is much work to be done before she is out of danger, and the Spanish may be nominally allies of England, but they are none too pleased at having her in their territorial waters. Amid all these challenges, her officers, crew, and passenger continue drawing closer together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm having so much fun with the character dynamics in this AU, I have to say. The Bush-Barbara-Archie alliance, especially, is simultaneously hilarious and heartwarming, so have some more of them!

It was a fortnight before they rounded Cape Mala and entered the Gulf of Panama, a fortnight of continuous hard labour for all aboard, so that none of them, even those inclined to do so, had much time to appreciate the rich azure of the sea, or the flying fish that sprang glistening from it as they went past, or the curious outline of the coast with its rich green forests and grey volcanoes. Twenty men had to be at the _Lydia's_ pumps night and day to keep her from sinking, so badly holed was she, and the makeshift repairs that had first been put in place the night after the battle had bit by bit to be redone in a more permanent fashion. Spare sails were brought out to replace the shot-riddled suit that she had carried during the battle; such of the rigging as they could slacken without endangering the slightly precarious balance of the masts was re-rove and, where possible, replaced entirely. But there were many repairs which would have to wait until they reached port. The stepping of a new mizzen-mast, for instance, required a sheer hulk with cranes, and the many holes below the waterline could not be stopped without the use of a dry-dock. All hands were looking eagerly forward to their arrival in Panama.

Even Lady Barbara was not exempt from the work of the ship now, for she was effectively the acting-surgeon, though it was still Laurie who held that title in the ship's books. The work did not grow easier, even though the wounded in the orlop deck were growing fewer by the day, for though many were convalescent, the hard life to which they were accustomed lending itself to speedy recoveries, many also were not. Nearly every morning saw Hornblower at the rail with his ancient but well-kept prayer book, committing at least one body to the deep until the day of resurrection, and not a man of those but Barbara had fought for his life as hard as she could, even after hope had been lost. 

Shock and exhaustion had been the worst killers in the first few days after the battle, and slow loss of blood, but now it was gangrene. Barbara found herself engaged in a struggle as grim and unremitting, for her part, as the battle with the _Natividad,_ trying to beat back the danger of infection from the men under her charge. Poor Galbraith, with his love of obscure poetry and his crippling shyness, went that way after four days of delirium, during which he had taken her for his mother, babbling away in a broad Scots dialect that she could only barely understand, and clinging to her hands as though she were his anchor to life. Hornblower had stood by her while the poor boy — he could surely be no older than twenty — slipped away little by little in the early morning, and she had seen his grief in the workings of his face, hard as he had tried to hide it. She had heard his voice tremble, too, as he read out the burial service that day, and in that shared pain many of the barriers that had been between the two of them were lowered imperceptibly, though they were both so busy that their new bond remained an unspoken thing, expressed only through quick understanding glances across the deck or the dinner table.

She had little time or energy to devote much attention to the state of the ship in general, or she would have noticed that almost as soon as the battle ended, the crew began to treat her with a different kind of respect now than when she had first come aboard. Then, she had been a great lady, and they had given their honours to her station and not to herself. Now, she was almost another officer to them: another leader, to be followed implicitly, and looked after when she needed it. She first began to suspect the fact one evening when she stepped on deck for a few moments for a breath of fresh air, and felt something slipped surreptitiously into the pocket of her borrowed jacket. Turning, saw the back of Polwheal's head as he stepped down into the companionway again. She put her hand into her pocket, and realised that she was holding a ship's biscuit. She had lost track of how many times she had seen Bush or Kennedy or Polwheal pull just this very trick on the captain, and found herself rather deeply touched by the gesture of concern now directed towards herself.

She had imperceptibly begun to share in the general life of the ship, as well, and so she was as much a part as anyone of the general feeling of relief which swept over the ship when they rounded Cape Mala and knew that Panama was only a few days' sailing away.

Bush, standing watch on the quarterdeck, was the first to notice that a familiar little guarda-costa lugger was running down the wind towards them from Panama. A few minutes later, she hove-to under their lee, and the selfsame smartly dressed Spanish captain who had brought Lady Barbara aboard stepped onto the _Lydia's_ deck once more and looked round curiously at the battered rigging. Bush, who felt a very justifiable proprietary pride in his jury-rigged mizzen mast, was rather offended by the open scrutiny.

His mood was not improved by the man's taking, only a few sentences into his conversation with Hornblower in Spanish, what seemed to Bush a rather insolent tone. Then the man produced a letter, and Bush fervently hoped that that would be his errand completed. However, when Hornblower read the thing, his face settled into hard lines, and he was silent for several moments. Then he turned back to the Spaniard, and with an air of dry and sarcastic courtesy, gave him a brief speech, which ended in a clear dismissal, bowed, turned his back, and walked over to the wheel. It gave Bush a good deal of pleasure to see the insolent officer look around himself confusedly before retreating back to his boat. 

"What did he say, sir?" he asked, once the Spaniard was gone.

"The Viceroy of Panama, in his infinite courtesy," Hornblower said testily, "has barred us from all ports on the Spanish Main."

"What the devil? After we…" Bush trailed off, finding no words descriptive of the situation which were fit for the ears of Lady Barbara, who was standing on the quarterdeck a little ways away.

"Quite so," Hornblower replied, still in clipped tones. "But we can do nothing about it. Our first problem will be supplies. Have we enough to last the voyage back to England?"

Bush did a brief mental assessment of the number of crew and the quantities in the _Lydia's_ storerooms. "Aye, sir. Rations might be a little short towards the end, but we could do it."

"And we can stop at St. Helena or Sierra Leone, or Gibraltar, if we must. Our errand is no longer secret, now," Hornblower added with a wry twist of his mouth. "Then we need only worry about refitting the _Lydia."_

Bush felt, but did not say, that this was rather a large and important "only," now that they had no chance of help in the matter.

"There's nothing for it," Hornblower said. "We shall have to find a good harbour and careen her. An unused harbour, and that means an island. Keep her hove-to, Mr. Bush, while I look at the charts."

He disappeared below, and Bush stood by the wheel and fumed helplessly while Kennedy, who had overheard, paced up and down the gundeck, scowling. The only thing more outrageous, to Bush's mind, than that the Dons should elect to change sides while the _Lydia_ was out of touch with the shore for seven months and then have the audacity to be angry at Hornblower for fulfilling his orders, given while they were at war with England, was that they should, after he had risked his life and his ship to amend the error which had never been his fault in the first place, proceed to give an order that might well doom him and his crew anyway, in full knowledge of what it meant. He swore under his breath. A moment later, Lady Barbara's voice broke into his reverie and he hoped fervently that she had not heard. "What does it mean to careen a ship, Mr. Bush?" she asked.

"It's a way of making repairs when there's no port near, ma'am," he answered. "You've got to find a sand beach that goes a good ways down into the water, and unload everything that's aboard. Then you beach the ship, and you can repair the hull below the waterline. It's a dangerous business if there may be hostile ships about, but since these Dagoes have shut their ports to us we've got no choice."

"I see," she said, and then Hornblower returned to the deck with the light of decision in his eyes.

Archie had contrived to stop his pacing of the gundeck so that he was within earshot of the quarterdeck, Bush noticed. "Put the ship about if you please, Mr. Bush," Hornblower said. "We will make for the island of Coiba."

"Aye aye, sir," Bush said, still feeling very much inclined to swear, but refraining for the sake of Lady Barbara.

Barbara watched with interest as the _Lydia_ made her slow and cautious way into the narrow and nearly invisible bay of Coiba, following the sole remaining ship's boat, which was taking soundings as it went to find the navigable channel, as Kennedy had explained to her. She would never have seen the bay at all, surrounded as it was by high cliffs, and accessible only through a single channel between two headlands that overlapped slightly from the outside, but Hornblower's keen eye had picked it out as they sailed 'round the island, and now they were moving into the bay inch by inch, under double-reefed tops'ls, as she had heard Bush order. Hornblower was now looking at the shore across from them with evident satisfaction, and Barbara could just see a glint of golden sand where the thick green jungle met the bright blue water. It looked a truly idyllic place, shielded from the outside world by natural walls of stone, but as soon as they had come out from the shadow of the tall headlands, the heat had sprung upon them like a live thing; the air was heavy with water, the rays of the sun struck unremittingly down into the little bay and reflected off the water, and there was no hint of a breeze. It would be a cruel place for men to work, she thought.

Nevertheless, work they did, like madmen, for the next eleven days, from sunrise until sunset. Before any work was done on the _Lydia_ at all, the great guns from her main deck were painstakingly hoisted into the cutter under Bush's eagle eye, one at a time, and mounted on the headlands where Kennedy and Gerard worked madly to be ready to receive them. After less than two days of labour, a formidable shore battery overlooked the only entrance into the harbour, ready to defend the _Lydia_ from any attack.

At the same time, under Wellard's supervision (with close orders from the captain and occasional visits from Bush), yet another party of labourers had been striving to clear a space on the beach for supplies and living quarters. Hornblower gave an order that separate huts of timber be built for the officers and the ladies. For the next eleven days, that would be the only acknowledgement her existence received from him. As long as Hornblower's ship was helpless, he worked like a man driven by devils, and his lieutenants with him, and the peaceful little cove became a hive of mad activity. The humid heat made even the smallest task exhausting, as Barbara found in her labours with those few of the wounded who remained, but Hornblower and Bush and Kennedy were up with the dawn and stayed awake well past dark. Bush laboured chiefly in building a great crane which stood out from the southern wall of the bay. Kennedy and Hornblower were never still, striding from the shore batteries to the great crane that was swiftly growing from the southern cliff to the _Lydia_ where she lay on her side under the care of Howell the carpenter and back again, apparently indispensable everywhere, for the work that had not seemed to slacken always redoubled in their wake.

Water was the one luxury that made the miserable, hot, humid days in the little bay bearable, for the stream that fell down the cliffs was fresh and clear and very nearly cool, and there was as much of it to drink and bathe in as anyone wanted. After several weeks aboard ship, where the fresh water was already beginning to taste stale from being in the cask, and was rationed as well, Barbara was sometimes tempted to follow the example of the midshipmen and start a splashing fight, if only there had been someone for her to do so with.

As though by magic over the next few days, the holes in the _Lydia's_ sides were filled in, the missing sheets of copper on her keel replaced, and the seams between her planks newly filled with oakum. Then she was kedged — a process which Barbara watched with fascination — and towed over to Bush's crane, and nearly a whole day was given to removing the stump of the old mizzenmast and slowly, carefully, swaying up the great mainyard, as she heard them call it, and setting it in the place of the broken mast. There were whoops of joy even from some of the officers when that task was finished successfully, and Wellard told her confidingly that if the mainyard had slipped, it would have sunk the _Lydia_ for certain.

An inordinate number of ropes and spars were then attached to the new mast in a sort of ordered chaos, until it was transformed from a slender line pointing gracefully skywards to a fully rigged mast like its neighbours, and the _Lydia,_ in Kennedy's gleeful words, was "seaworthy once more, and ready to challenge the worst gales the Horn can throw at her."

Bush, unbending from his usual sternness in his weariness and relief, gave Kennedy a clout on the head that knocked his cocked hat off, and growled, "Don't tempt fate, Mr. Kennedy," before stumping off to the stream for a drink of water. 

Kennedy only laughed.

The next day, the process of undoing all the work of the first thirty-six hours began. The food and drink were loaded first, the empty water casks having been replenished from the stream, and Barbara bade a regretful farewell to the merry little fall that had been the greatest pleasure of the past eleven days. Then the powder and shot, and finally the guns themselves were swayed back down the cliffs, made the painstaking journey back to the _Lydia_ in the cutter, and were hoisted back on deck.

She was watching this last process from her habitual place on the quarterdeck when Hornblower came on deck, his face wreathed in smiles as she had never seen it before, almost bouncing with each step, and greeted her without a change in his happy expression. "Good morning, ma'am," he said. "I trust you found your cabin comfortable again?"

Barbara could not but smile back at him. Indeed, she almost laughed, so comical was the contrast between his manner now and the scowling taskmaster who had driven both himself and his men to work until they dropped over the past week and a half. "Thank you, Captain, it is marvellously comfortable," she said. "Your crew has worked wonders to have done so much in so little time."

As she spoke, he reached out and took both her hands in his. She found herself once more meeting the full focus of those keen brown eyes, but this time it was not an alarming sensation, but one of delight. She seemed to be drawn into his own joy. A single word, she thought, could set him dancing, if only it were the right word. "We shall be at sea by nightfall," he said ecstatically.

She could no more have been dignified with him than she could have been dignified with a baby. He seemed as happy as one, and just as unconscious of himself. "I have missed the stars," she said. "And the wind."

"And the dawn," he said. "Like azure and argent on an old heraldic banner."

Then he blushed fiercely and dropped her hands, self-conscious once again. "Exactly," she said, as encouragingly as she could, but there was no restoring his unfettered happiness, though he looked pleased under his embarrassment as he mumbled some excuse and went for'ard to bawl orders at the men engaged in swaying the last of the great guns up from the launch, plastering a stern frown on his face as he went to hide the smile that kept playing at the corners of his mouth.

She looked across the deck to where Bush and Kennedy were standing, overseeing the tricky process of bringing the gun on board, and the smiles on their faces as they watched Hornblower called forth an answering smile from her. As though alerted by some sixth sense, the two men looked over to meet her eyes, and though no words could be exchanged at that distance she was quite certain that they were in perfect accord in their fond amusement.

Then the last gun was aboard, and the anchor came up, and the _Lydia_ set sail once more. They were bound for England at last.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And there you have it...the penultimate chapter. I think.
> 
> Comments feed the muse, as ever!


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